The support of attendees for tourism development: evidence from religious festivals, Taiwan

Abstract

This study examines the relationships among emotional experience, authenticity experience, festival identity, and support for tourism development among attendees at two well-known traditional religious festivals in Taiwan. Our theoretical models suggest that authenticity experience directly affects attendees’ festival identity and indirectly affects attendees’ support for the tourism development of the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage festival and the Neimen Songjiang Battle Array festival. Moreover, attendees’ emotional experience positively, significantly, and directly affects their festival identity and indirectly affects their support for the tourism development of the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage festival. The theoretical framework of this study provides insightful suggestions about festival implications that are valuable to researchers and practitioners in the field of festival tourism and extends our understanding of traditional religious festivals attendees’ support for tourism development. This study sheds light on previously proposed but unexamined behavioural models as applied to the attendees of traditional religious festivals and thus contributes significantly to the literature on festival tourism and attendees’ behaviour at festivals. We conclude that when people participate in traditional religious festivals such as the ones under consideration, they gain authentic experiences, which strengthens their sense of traditional religious festival identity and place attachment; as a result, they are more likely to support tourism development.