Festival Context Research Articles

Place image, quality of life, and behavioral intention of residents during the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Rationale/purpose: This study examines the perceptions of festival host residents of the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage using the proposed model to evaluate the antecedent and outcome variables of place image. Design/methodology/approach: Using quantitative methods, this study proposes a model to determine host residents’ perceptions based on fit, place image, quality of life, and behavioral intention. Findings: The findings showed that place image is vital in establishing a supportive perception toward the festival host city. Quality of life not only mediates the perceptions of residents’ image and their residency but also independently contributes to the development of residents’ behavioral intentions. The perceptions of place image or the quality of life of residents, especially place image, are significant predictors of residents’ behavioral intentions. Practical implications: This study extends the concepts of fit and place image by taking a psychological perspective to provide strategies for festival management. To evaluate residents’ quality of life and gain their intention to support for the festival, the present study suggests that event organizers and the local government take action on the characteristics of the festival and the host city represents. Providing entertainment activities combine with Mazu culture at nighttime is one of the suggestions. Research contributions: The exploratory model we proposed herein to explain host residents’ viewpoints showed sufficient predictive power. The results underline the importance of fit, which can predict and explain place image. Furthermore, the present study contributes to existing research by applying the concept of fit in the festival context.

Virtual Reality in Festivals: A Systematic Literature Review and Implications for Consumer Research

Technological advancements in virtual reality have influenced festivalgoers, performers, and festival organizers. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizers of cultural and tourism festivals have sought to deliver festivals online using virtual reality to provide an immersive experience from home. However, despite growing interest in virtual reality for festivals, there is no current systematic review to synthesize knowledge from academic papers within the festival context. This paper aims to provide a structured understanding of extant virtual reality research regarding festivals by using a systematic literature review. After a comprehensive review of extant literature from major databases, 19 relevant articles were extracted and synthesized according to the types, venues, roles, and objectives of the virtual reality applications. This study is the first systematic literature review to examine the current landscape of consumer research on virtual reality in festivals. Our results show that the limited numbers of extant literature concerning virtual reality in festivals indicates that this is an important yet significantly under-researched topic for future research. Current literature on virtual reality in festival contexts also lacks an in-depth understanding of consumer engagement and experiences. This paper recommends incorporating the application of theory and robust consumer research methods into future virtual festival research. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2022-06-05-016 Full Text: PDF

Local/global: amateur cinema and new forms of valorization in archival film festivals

ABSTRACT This paper will focus on the new landscapes of valorization and access to amateur/small gauge films within the archival film festival context. Archival small gauge film festivals present themselves as something completely different from those festivals dedicated to amateur and experimental cinema in the past, mainly because their goal is to valorize assets that have been deposited in specialized archives from the 1980s onwards. This film heritage is composed not only by the products of serious amateurs, but also by home movies and experimental films. We will start from the cases of Home Movie Day, a project developed in 2002 by archivists, curators and film historians in the US, Archivio Aperto in Italy, and Orphan Film Symposium, founded in 1999. Throughout the years they have become a blueprint for archival small gauge film festivals and a label to which different experiences refer: small archival film festivals; meeting activities where the broader field of ‘non-theatrical film’ is addressed; the Home Movie Marathon, a live streaming in which amateur films from all across the world are screened, etc. Furthermore, we will focus on examples from the European context, such as Archivio Aperto and its recent developments with the Memoryscapes digital platform.

Fringe Shakespeare: Shakespeare as You’ve Never Seen It Before

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has thousands of shows every year and dozens of Shakespeare productions among them. To stand out in the saturated festival market, Shakespeare productions emphasise their popular appeal, rebranding Shakespeare as a simultaneously familiar and, at the same time, new product. The neoliberal market conditions of the festival impose a series of limitations and, consequently, Shakespeare productions need to adjust to time and space restrictions and reduce their casts and sets. Shakespeare productions, therefore, negotiate these constraints in order to attract an audience, a tension that has given rise to specific theatrical approaches to Shakespeare in performance. The main objective of this article is therefore to provide an understanding of Fringe Shakespeare, that is, the theatrical events featuring Shakespeare in performance at the Edinburgh Fringe whose distinctive characteristics are determined by the festival context. To do so, the first part of the article reviews the concept of fringe theatre, examines the tension between innovation and material constraints and explores the reasons why so many companies decide to stage Shakespeare at the Edinburgh Fringe. The second part examines the performing trends in Fringe Shakespeare: appropriations, solo shows, new writing, adaptations into unusual genres and parodies. This will shed light on Fringe Shakespeare and its definition as a theatrical event in the first decades of the twenty-first century.

Brass band music in Naples between the ritual dimension and innovation: the case-study of Madonna dell’Arco’s divisioni musicali

This article examines the musical practices enacted by informal bands active in ritual and festive contexts in the province of Naples (Italy) – in particular, those connected to the Catholic cult of the Madonna dell’Arco and to the Feste dei Gigli popular in several towns around Naples. My main purpose is to enlighten how the complexity of the stylistic background which characterises local bands’ musical practices undermines a number of supposed dichotomies – between folklore and pop culture; between local aesthetics and that of the wider global sphere –, and musicians emerge as key figures who facilitate the renewal of local aesthetics. Endowed with competences and knowledge that allow them to turn the often generic requests of local actors into clearly outlined aesthetical and stylistic options, they adapt new genres, styles and repertoires to the traditional ritual and festive symbolic frame, creating what local actors call “new traditions”.

Understanding the influence of place on festival making and artistic production in the local urban festival context

ABSTRACT Recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in research output on arts festivals and cultural events, and a growing focus on the role festivals play in negotiating and constructing meanings of place. However, little attention has been paid to how place shapes the process of festival making and artistic production. This paper attempts to address this shortcoming by examining the extent to which place matters to the production of festival activity and asks: how does place influence festival making and artistic production in a local arts festival context? The study is part of ongoing qualitative research into the Five Lamps Arts Festival, a local urban festival in Dublin’s North Inner-City and employs a mixed methods approach. Findings indicate that processes of festival making and artistic production are permeated by the social, cultural, and physical dimensions of place, thereby revealing the potent and mutually inter-dependent relationship between place and festivals.

Segmenting urban festival visitors’ employing expectation : Comparing between planned and unplanned festivalgoers

Though planned visitors have historically been shown to be attracted to urban public festivals due to their proximity to the area and to the attractions, unplanned visitors have not been investigated in the festival context. This paper attempted market segmentation based on two classifications of previous planning: before visit and expectation of festival experiences. Survey respondents were divided into two groups of unplanned and planned festivalgoers, and factor analysis was employed to identify festivalgoers’ expectation factors of the festival experience. Utilizing a K-means cluster analysis, a total of six segments were obtained. Each group showed a different combination of festival expectation styles. ANOVA results presented distinct demographics between the festivalgoer cluster groups and confirmed different levels of festivalgoers’ satisfaction and inclination to recommend. The results suggest that festival organizers should comprehend the characteristics of their target market and implement appropriate marketing strategies to enhance festivalgoers’ satisfaction and to improve their likelihood to recommend such events.

Exploring the jazz festival experience amongst local and non-local residents: The case of the Jazzaldia Festival in Spain

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the jazz festival experience at the Heineken Jazzaldia Festival in San Sebastian, Spain. It focuses especially on the relationship between participants’ area of residence and their experience of the festival, concert expectations, preference for different festival settings and perception of the best aspects of the festival.Design/methodology/approachThis study modifies and applies the Audience Experience Survey (Radbourne et al., 2009) to the Heineken Jazzaldia Festival in San Sebastian, Spain. A total of 406 valid questionnaires were obtained. A quantitative analysis technique was used for the area of residence, on the one hand, and for concert expectations, audience experience and venue setting, on the other. A qualitative approach was applied for identifying the best aspects of the festival.FindingsThe results suggest that the audiences’ festival preferences differed according to their area of residence. Audience members who lived in Spain outside of the Basque Country were more motivated to attend the festival, had higher concert expectations and greater indoor venue concert attendance, and considered music diversity to be one of the most important aspects of the festival. Local participants were more likely not to have expectations prior to concerts, had higher outdoor venue concert attendance rates and preferred ambience compared with residents from outside of the Basque Country.Practical implicationsFindings could be relevant to festivals’ organisers for management and marketing purposes in terms of their audiences’ needs and preferences. One of the main results obtained is that local residents were more likely not to have expectations prior to concerts. They also equalised music diversity, artists, stages and atmosphere as the best Festival’s aspects while participants from outside of the Basque Country prioritised music diversity aspect.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature regarding residents’ behaviour in the Spanish music festival context. Our findings add to the body of knowledge around local audiences’ and non-local audience’s experience in jazz festivals.

From the ground up: growing an Australian Aboriginal cultural festival into a live musical community

PurposeThe purpose is to review the formation, event management, performance development and consumption of South East Australia’s inaugural 2018 Giiyong Festival with emphasis on the sociocultural imaginary and political positionings of its shared theatre of arts.Design/methodology/approachA trialogue between a musicologist, festival director and Indigenous stakeholder accrues qualitative ethnographic findings for discussion and analysis of the organic growth and productive functioning of the festival.FindingsAs an unprecedented moment of large-scale unity between First and non-First Nations Peoples in South East Australia, Giiyong Festival elevated the value of Indigenous business, culture and society in the regional marketplace. The performing arts, coupled with linguistic and visual idioms, worked to invigorate the Yuin cultural landscape.Research limitations/implicationsAdditional research was curtailed as COVID-19 shutdowns forced the cancellation of Giiyong Festival (2020). Opportunities for regional Indigenous arts to subsist as a source for live cultural expression are scoped.Practical implicationsMusic and dance are renewable cultural resources, and when performed live within festival contexts they work to sustain Indigenous identities. When aligned with Indigenous knowledge and languages, they impart central agency to First Nations Peoples in Australia.Social implicationsThe marketing of First Nations arts contributes broadly to high political stakes surrounding the overdue Constitutional Recognition of Australia's Indigenous Peoples.Originality/valueThe inclusive voices of a festival director and Indigenous manager augment a scholarly study of SE Australia's first large Aboriginal cultural festival that supplements pre-existing findings on Northern Australian festivals.

Happiology in community festivals: a case of Filipino repeat local participants

ABSTRACT Happiness, a construct widely studied since ancient times, has permeated the field of tourism studies for its capacity to promote well-being and satisfaction among tourists. However, in a festival context, studies on happiness remain a research imperative to date. This phenomenological inquiry seeks to elucidate the ontology of festival happiness among a select group of Filipino repeat participants in three major community festivals in the Philippines. Twenty-one (n=21) purposively selected participants were involved and subjected to a semi-structured interview. Field texts were analyzed via primary and secondary coding analyses and through constant comparison of data, the Cone of Repeat Participants Festival Happiness consisting of distinct views of festival happiness as rootedness and responsibility has emerged in this qualitative study. Notably, the notion of festival happiness as rootedness emphasizes the role of aesthetics, spirituality, and nostalgia as these evoke pleasant emotions such as pride, appreciation, and devotion among festival participants. While the second notion, named festival happiness as responsibility, underscores that participation, growing with the festival, and contributing to its success may form happy, empathic, resilient, and altruistic festival participants. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in this paper.

Residents' perception of festival impacts and satisfaction: a focus on Zanzibar international film festival (ZIFF)

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to test the perceived economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts on the satisfaction of local residents with the Zanzibar International Film Festival.Design/methodology/approachStructured questionnaires were administered to 299 local Zanzibaris, to obtain the data necessary for hypotheses testing using Structural Equation Modelling through Smart PLS 3.0.FindingsThe findings reveal that locals' perceptions related to economic, cultural, environmental and pride impacts of the festival had greater positive significant effects on the level of satisfaction of local residents compared to image, entertainment and social impacts.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings uphold the utility of Social Exchange Theory in explaining local residents' perceptions of the festival. The results contribute to the existing literature on festivals by affirming the multidimensional nature of their social consequences.Practical implicationsManagerially, the results shed light on possible areas to be improved by festival promoters from both the public and private sectors in enhancing the positive perceptions held by local residents as well as improving festivals in the area or similar context.Originality/valueThe study expands the Triple Bottom Line dimensions of sustainability in the festival context by adding pride, entertainment and image perceived value.

Examining food festival attendees’ existential authenticity and experiential value on affective factors and loyalty: An application of stimulus-organism-response paradigm

Food festivals appeal to a broad range of potential attendees. However, for food festival attendees to engage in such a food adventure to arouse high levels of satisfaction in an environment different from their home, their true authentic self may need to be restrained. The present, study, thus uses Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) paradigm to examine the relationship among existential authenticity, experiential value, satisfaction, customer delight, and loyalty within the food festival context. Using a questionnaire survey, 598 festival attendees of a food event were sampled conveniently. The results show that while experiential value and existential authenticity are important environmental stimuli within the food festival setting, not all emotional states are influenced by existential authenticity. Existential authenticity is negatively related to satisfaction suggesting that the more attendees are true to themselves regarding different food cultures, the lesser they are to be satisfied. Moreover, festival attendees’ loyalty is affected by both satisfaction and customer delight. Implications for marketing food festivals to meet the preferences of prospective attendees are discussed.

Frequent music festival attendance: festival fandom and career development

PurposeThe purpose of the study is to compare features of career development and fandom in frequent festival attendance in the context of Finnish music festivals.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses a mixed methods research approach and employs two theoretical frameworks: theories of career development and fandom.FindingsIn frequent festival attendance, both festival career development and festival fandom are most clearly present in motivation development and social dimensions.Practical implicationsStrategically, frequent festivalgoers should be considered as crucial stakeholders, who might mobilize the co-creation of a sense of community or festival brand.Originality/valueMusic-related fandom has been previously investigated in relation to artists and specific musical genres, but not so much in relation to music festivals in general. Career studies, on the other hand, concentrate heavily on sports events. There is a scarcity of research scrutinizing both career development and fandom in the festival context within the same study, and festival attendance as part of music tourism is an under-researched area.

Future trajectories of festival research

In their editorial for the first issue of Tourist Studies, Adrian Franklin and Mike Crang made us aware that tourism research had shifted to an exploration of the extraordinary everyday where ‘more or less everyone now lives in a world rendered or reconfigured as interesting, entertaining and attractive – for tourists’. From our standpoint 20 years later, we suggest this particular departure point has important insights to offer our understanding of a quintessential tourism event, that of the festival, which now intervenes in daily life in all manner of ways. In this commentary, we present a reflective commentary on recent scholarship that advocates for more rigour in festival studies, with greater theory development and testing within the festival context, and how this work is suggestive of future directions for festival research. We present several areas that are ripe for further research, particularly given the tumultuous nature of the world we are living in, such as the challenges of climate change and how we might socialise in a post-Covid world. Much has changed in the 20 years since the inception of Tourist Studies, but festivals remain resilient – they will re-emerge in future, perhaps not unscathed but with a renewed sense of purpose.

Assessing the Learning Effects of Host Communications on the Green Knowledge and Behavior of Festival Attendees—Evidence from Compulsory Garbage Sorting in China

Compulsory waste sorting has been in practice in pilot cities in China and is expected to be fully implemented in urban areas of the country by 2025. However, the learning of compulsory waste sorting by non-local festival attendees in a semi-free choice festival context and the roles of the relevant factors require further investigation. In particular, for the non-local attendees, the festival context avails both the opportunity and occasion for effective learning of compulsory waste sorting, a unique research window worth further exploration. Employing a systematic modeling approach to comprehensively investigate the interrelationships among the identified significant factors, this study explores and examines the mechanism of this learning process with a hierarchy of positive relationships between the host communications, learning outcomes and behavioral intentions of the festival attendees concerning compulsory waste sorting. The research subject of this study was a branded forest music festival held in a waste-sorting pilot city in East China, which has long been pivoting to the promotion of environmental-friendly values. The objective measurement of the learning outcomes integrated by this study accentuate the effectiveness of the proposed structural model. Our research findings confirmed all of the hypothesized relationships and established positive learning outcomes for the festival attendees on waste sorting as instructed by the festival hosts. The role of the festival attendees’ environmental attitudes in mediating their learning outcomes was corroborated. This study advances the understanding of the experiential learning processes of pro-environment and sustainability knowledge and behavior in festival contexts, areas that require future research attention with growing reflections on and awareness of environmental protection and sustainable development.

The antecedents of visitors' flow experience and its influence on memory and behavioral intentions in the music festival context

At present, few studies have focused on the antecedents and consequences of music festival visitors' flow experience. Based on the cognitive appraisal theory, this study explores five antecedents of music festival visitors' flow experience (skill performance, ambiance, self-congruence, other consumers' passion, consumer-to-consumer interaction) and two consequences (visitors' memory and behavioral intentions) to enrich relevant research. In this study, a total of 419 visitors were investigated. All of the participants were visitors of 2019 Midi music festival, the largest music festival in China. Findings indicate that five antecedents are all positively related to visitors' flow experience, which in turn positively affects visitors' memory and behavioral intentions. Visitors' memory also has a positive effect on their behavioral intentions. In addition, the mediating role of flow experience between its antecedents and consequences was examined. • Studies the antecedents and effects of music festival visitors' flow experience. • Skill performance has more influence on flow experience than any other antecedent. • Ambiance is also a very important antecedent of flow experience. • Flow experience positively affects the visitors' memory and behavioral intentions. • Lays a foundation for future studies using flow experience as a mediator.

La ocupación sonora de una ciudad irregular y los “trovadores de la tierra” en Asunción colonial (Paraguay, siglos XVI-XVII)

The musical practices of Hispanic origin that arose in Spanish-American colonial cities, whether in the institutional sphere or in everyday life, were determined by the initial social conformation and the spatial and infrastructure development of cities. This article aims to present how some of these practices were established in Asuncion, Paraguay, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, taking into account the socio-cultural and physical structure of the city to question the existent tension between models, regulations and their adaptations in complex and distant scenarios such as the one studied. In the framework of Cultural Urban History, and through the analysis of Council records and judicial processes, among others, the musical negotiations that affected the soundscape of the city in public and private festive contexts are addressed.

Capturing societal impact: the case of state-funded festivals in Finland

ABSTRACT Festivals have become prominent in cultural life. Aiming to deepen the understanding of the impacts of arts and cultural festivals and their delivery on public cultural policies, this study examines festivals that were partly funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture (MinEdC) in 2018. The key questions were: How do the festivals themselves see their social, cultural and economic impacts/outcomes? How do the self-evaluated impacts/outcomes relate to the targets of (Finnish) cultural policy? We argue that exploring the societal impact resulting from the social, cultural and economic long-term impacts of festival productions with a multidisciplinary approach is a valuable method for generating comprehensive understanding on the overall value of arts festivals. We have devised a framework for exploring festival production networks that assists us to perceive how the social, cultural, economic and long-term societal impacts might be evaluated in the festival context. Undeniably, further multidisciplinary research is needed.

Group congruent labelling leads to subjective expansion of time.

Given top-down effects on perception, we examined the effect of group identity on time perception. We investigated whether the duration of an ambiguous sound clip is processed differently as a function of group congruent or incongruent source attribution. Group congruent (in-group) and incongruent (out-group) context was created by attributing the source of an identical ambiguous sound clip to Hindu or Muslim festivals. Participants from both the religious groups (Hindus and Muslims) prospectively listened to a 20 s long ambiguous sound clip and reproduced its duration (experiment 1a). Both groups reproduced significantly longer durations when the sound clip was associated with the group congruent compared to the group incongruent festival contexts. The two groups did not differ significantly in reproduced duration when the sound attributed to a non-religious common (busy city street) context (experiment 1b). With multiple durations (1, 5, 10 and 20 s), longer durations were reproduced for group congruent labelling at objectively longer durations (experiment 2). According to the internal clock model of time perception, the significant slope effect indicated that the group congruent context influences temporal experience through changes in pacemaker frequency. We argue that the duration appearing relevant to one's own group is processed differently possibly owing to differences in attentional deployment, which influences the pacemaker frequency.

Banding together in a festival context: Examining effects of a joint-stakeholder external service recovery

Despite substantial growth in revenue and attendance numbers on a global and country level over the past decades, failure is still a fairly common phenomenon in the events/festival industry. Drawing on two scenario studies and data collected in the United States, this research investigated the impact on festival-goers’ evaluations and behavior of joint-stakeholder external service recoveries, in contrast to the prevalent focus on examining service recoveries by a single stakeholder that caused the failure. Findings revealed that festival-goers had different perceptions of and behavioral intentions towards the various stakeholders depending on their perception of fault for the failure. Yet, rather than a predicted joint effect with failure severity, we found a significant interaction effect of the locus of causality with service recovery measures, either via an internal or external recovery. Implications of study findings and directions for future research are discussed.