Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on music festival attendees

Abstract

AbstractAs festivals were cancelled or people were afraid of participating in mass gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic, the well-being effects of festival participation were missed. How can these missed hedonic, eudaimonic or social well-being impacts be described, and how has the prolonged absence of live music events and the cancellation of the festival summer influenced attitudes towards festivals? Research data comprised nearly 13,000 responses to the Finnish Festival Barometer 2020 at a time when all the large festivals had been cancelled. Clustering the COVID-19 related questions led to three segments named Covid-cautious, Music-driven and Experience-oriented. The findings indicate challenges for event organisers, particularly in terms of communality. The theoretical contribution of this study is in scrutinising the well-being effects of festival attendance at a time when festivals were banned. Thus, survey participants could say the factors they missed most, revealing the most important well-being dimensions for their festival attendance.