An impact study of city image: A case of the film festvals of The Hague

For many decades, culture has been a tradition that is practiced by our fore fathers. Most European countries, realizing its importance made it a public good for their entire societies to appreciate. These cultural practices have nowadays been used by nations to market their cities. In other words, cities stage events and festivals not only to attract investors and investment, but also to improve the images of their cities. Whilst some countries have succeeded significantly in these practice, others have both failed and given up or are still struggling to survive. The Hague city of the Netherlands is one of the cultural cities that the nation can boast of. As such, this research tried to carry out a comprehensive study to find out to what extent The Hague Film festivals have impacted on the image of the city. A mixed research method was upheld which included both survey and interviews. The research was longitudinal in nature assessing the festivals from social, psychological and cultural perspectives to generalise how the general public perceived the city with respect to its image when the festivals took place. It was concluded that the annual film festival of the Movies that Matter is even though showing some improvements in its activities, not adequate to impact the city since it is still in its infant years (four years of festival staging so far). The processed data from our regression analysis and some information from literature review support our conclusions. Nevertheless, some limitations were realized and highlighted and further recommendations were provided for future researches in this field of study