Performance measurement of English public sport facilities: aggregate analysis and its practicability

The aim of this research is to adopt aggregate performance analyses to measure the performance of English public sport facilities and examine the practicability of these analyses. Based on the National Benchmarking Service for Sports Halls and Swimming Pools (NBS), provided for Sport England by the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, four dimensions of performance are measured in this thesis, i. e. operational efficiency, sport equity, service quality and customer segmentation.

First, two aggregate performance analyses data envelopment analysis (DEA) and multivariate statistical analysis (MSA) are conducted to provide an insight into the industry's overall performance. Second, based on the two approaches above, an aggregate performance analysis framework is developed and tested at the individual facility level. Then its practicability is evaluated. The contributions of this research are twofold: (1) to present the value and critically evaluate the practicability of aggregate performance analysis; and (2) to expand the theoretical literature on performance measurement in the public leisure sector.

The research findings demonstrate that the `convergence' strength of aggregate analysis can complement the `inclusiveness' strength of partial measures adopted by the NBS, particularly in efficiency measurement and customer segmentation analysis. In addition, for practitioners in the public leisure sector, `inclusiveness' and `simplicity' are the most important criteria of a good performande measurement system. That is, not only does performance data need to be inclusive, the analytical process also needs to be simple and understandable. Finally, facility managers' analytical skills and motivations for benchmarking are two factors which determine the feasibility of aggregate performance analysis in the public leisure sector.