Barriers and Facilitators of Participation for Individuals with Hearing Loss in MICE Events: A Systematic Literature Review

This paper reviews the barriers and facilitators that influence the participation of individuals with hearing loss in MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions) events. This study will provide a clear understanding of the challenges faced by individuals with hearing loss and the enabling factors that promote their inclusion in MICE event settings. Current literature shows that participation of individuals with hearing loss in events is shaped by various factors such as communication barriers, environmental acoustics, availability of assistive listening devices, provision of sign language interpretation, captioning services, venue accessibility, as well as attitudes and awareness of event organizers towards disability inclusion. Methodologically, this paper aims to systematically review past studies to produce a holistic understanding of the barriers and facilitators affecting the participation of individuals with hearing loss in MICE events. For this study, the authors examined databases such as Scopus, Science Direct, and Google Scholar to select related articles. Articles selected manually from Google Search were also included. All the related articles were subjected to a thorough and systematic quantitative review and content analysis. By identifying the main research gaps, the paper proposes a new conceptual framework of barriers and facilitators influencing the participation of individuals with hearing loss in MICE events. Finally, this paper provides theoretical implications based on the gaps in previous research. Furthermore, it also offers valuable insights for MICE event organizers and policymakers in promoting accessible and inclusive event experiences for individuals with hearing loss. Essentially, the results of this study using systematic literature review provides a complete summary of barriers and facilitators that influence the participation of individuals with hearing loss in MICE events.

Hearing loss, barriers, facilitators, MICE events, participation, accessibility, systematic literature review.

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