Cultural events sustainability in urban ecosystems

This PhD dissertation examines how festivals and cultural events can evolve from sites of environmental concern into laboratories for sustainability innovation, identifying the theoretical, policy, and organisational conditions that enable this transformation. The research addresses the critical challenge of sustainable event management through three interconnected studies that approach the field from complementary perspectives: theoretical foundations, policy mechanisms, and organisational capabilities. The first study presents a systematic literature review of environmental sustainability research in leisure events and cultural festivals. The analysis reveals significant theoretical fragmentation, limited methodological diversity, and insufficient attention to systems-level dynamics. While existing research provides valuable insights into specific sustainability practices, it lacks integrated frameworks that link individual event initiatives to broader sustainability transformation processes. The review establishes a research agenda calling for multi-level theoretical approaches and stronger connections between academic research and practical implementation. The second study investigates Italy’s Minimum Environmental Criteria (MEC) for events, introduced in 2022 as the first mandatory Green Public Procurement framework designed specifically for the events sector in Europe. Through a case study of cultural organisations and venues in the Turin metropolitan area, the research explores how different organisations respond to new sustainability legislation. The findings demonstrate that well-designed policy frameworks can act as catalysts for organisational learning and capability development rather than merely regulatory constraints. The study further shows how policy innovations can generate market dynamics that reward sustainability excellence and drive competitive advantage through environmental performance. The third study analyses Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) practices in Italian music festivals through the theoretical lens of the Resource-Based View (RBV). Using qualitative content analysis of 27 festivals’ public communications, the research investigates how festivals integrate environmental considerations into human resource strategies. The analysis reveals significant variation in GHRM implementation, with leading cases demonstrating how human-centric sustainability approaches can address environmental outcomes and social inclusion simultaneously, providing empirical support for integrated sustainability frameworks. Collectively, the findings demonstrate that effective sustainability transformation in festivals and cultural events requires coordinated attention to theory, policy, and organisational practice. The thesis contributes to advancing integrated frameworks for sustainable event management by linking conceptual understanding, institutional innovation, and human capability development — positioning festivals as genuine laboratories for sustainability transformation.