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The study has three objectives. The first objective of this paper is to investigate the underlying dimensions of motivation for attending an international festival in Turkey and whether motivation will vary across six different festival products (symphony, rock, world music, dance, ballet, and theater). The second purpose is to understand how festival attendees perceive the socio‐economic impacts of the festival and how these perceived impacts vary across different festival attendee groups. Finally, the study examines the overall satisfaction of festival attendees with respect to different festival products.

The empirical data was collected by way of self‐administered questionnaires to obtain perceptions and motivations of 523 attendees in Eskisehir International Festival.

The results showed that there were significant differences in motivation among attendees from six different festival products. Duncan's multiple‐range tests were performed to further examine differences in motivation among these attendees. The mean scores of different groups indicate that “rock event” attendees tended to have lower motivation scores than other groups and have the lowest ratings on the factor of “family togetherness”. However, attendees did not differ on the perceived importance of socio‐economic impacts and satisfaction with the festival, irrespective of the festival product attended.

Festivals and special events have increased worldwide because they provide significant economic, socio‐cultural, and political impacts on destinations. While a plethora of studies have examined tourists' motivation and socio‐economic impacts, little research has been conducted on the motivation and socio‐economic impact of festival attendees with regard to different product offerings.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse film festival spectators on the basis of their motives for attending as well as other variables linked to cultural consumption, the evaluation of the event and certain sociodemographic characteristics of attendees.

Survey data were collected at the Valdivia International Film Festival, the case study. In order to achieve the goals of the paper, a variety of statistical methods and techniques were used. First, principal component factorial analysis was applied to identify the underlying motivational dimensions. Second, the authors adopted cluster analysis based on the dimensions pinpointed in the factorial analysis in order to segment festival attendees. Finally, analysis of variance and χ2 analysis were applied to establish each group's profile.

The empirical research reveals three motivation factors (discovery, entertainment and cinema) and three discrete groups of spectators, labelled as socially indifferent, film lovers and enthusiasts). They present different profiles from a consumption viewpoint.

The results provide useful insights into cultural policy and management of this kind of events, and even for those in charge of tourism policies in the city and the region.

The paper aims to contribute to the literature addressing festival motivation for the specific case of a film festival, a field for which there are almost no studies into motivation, in a given geographical area South America which is active in creating festivals.

The present study aimed at classifying cannabis festival attendees based on their motivation and travel activities, profiling the resultant latent groups with demographic and travel characteristics and examining the association between the groups.

With a quantitative-exploratory approach, this study collected 392 out-of-state visitors' responses to a cannabis festival in Denver, Colorado and classified them according to their motivation and activity participation. Using the classification results, the study profiled the festival visitors based on their demographic and travel characteristics. Latent class analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and cross-tabulation were employed.

The results revealed that festival visitors were categorized into four latent groups by motivation and three latent groups by travel activity participation. Regarding motivation, the cannabis seekers (relatively young, White/Caucasian and residents in liberal states) and multi-purpose seekers (relatively young, Black/African American and residents in conservative states) were strongly motivated by cannabis-related factors. For travel activity participation, moderate participants were more likely to be first-time visitors, whereas active and passive participants were classified as repeat visitors.

The current study filled the research gap in the quantitative exploration of cannabis tourism industry in general and cannabis festival segment specifically. The findings contribute to (1) better understanding of out-of-state visitors' motivation and travel behaviors while attending a cannabis themed festival and (2) serving as a seminal work in the context of cannabis tourism literature since the recreational cannabis legalization in the United States.

The purpose of this study is to explore how event attendees experience interactive encounters in the most competitive segment of the business sector of events – conferences.

A total of 26 in-depth personal interviews was conducted with previous conference attendees. Line-by-line open coding, axial coding and selective coding are performed.

This study develops a framework for experiences during customer–customer encounters (CCEs), which presents a dual motivational structure that explains one’s participation in CCEs, a classification of typical CCEs, four processes that one experiences during CCEs and three levels of situational factors that influence experiences during CCEs.

This study makes one of the first attempts to propose a multidimensional conceptualization of CCE experiences using an attendee perspective. Beyond the utilitarian and social benefits, this study suggests that it is important for event studies to explore the psychological and emotional meanings of CCE experiences through an experiential lens and that the competitive battleground in event industry should lie in staging memorable experiences during CCEs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the motivation of the attendees of the Annual Meeting of the Serbian Association of Seniors. The research aims to segment the senior participants according to their push and pull motivations for attending association meetings, by using cluster analysis to understand the role of destination personality in the segmentation process.

The questionnaire, based on a seven-point Likert scale, was distributed among representatives and members of the Association of Pensioners of Serbia. The data collected were assessed with the use of SPSS 21 statistical software.

The results of the study reveal the most important push and pull motives that drive senior citizens to take part in this type of event. It has also provided a better understanding of senior business event participants in relation to destination personality.

The data were collected from 124 questionnaires. In order to provide a more detailed insight into the senior citizens’ motivation to participate in events, a larger sample would be required.

The research findings provide valuable information about senior business event visitor behaviour, which is of high importance for destination marketers and managers.

Nowadays, business events motivation research is generally focussed on middle-aged and young attendees, so insight into the perception of senior citizens related to business event motivation provides a further understanding of this specific consumer segment. Additionally, gaining insight into seniors’ perspectives related to participation in association meetings after retiring from work assists in comprehending the complex nature of their motivation to participate in these types of business events, as well as underlining the fact that senior business event attendees have been, up until this point, largely neglected as a group in terms of similar research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate underlying motivational dimensions of visitors attending the International Troia Festival (ITF), Çanakkale, Turkey.

Surveys with 26 items on six motivational dimensions were empirically tested. Data were collected by a self-administered survey. The study sample comprised attendees of particular festival events which were suitable for survey practice in the ITF lasting for five days. The participants of the survey were the attendees of two theater shows, two conferences, and two folk dance shows. A total of 473 usable forms were obtained from the visitors and processed in the analysis.

Significant differences and relations in motivational dimensions were found on the basis of visitors’ socio-demographic origins. Female visitors are more likely to attend festival events with high motivation of family togetherness and cultural exploration. Also male visitors are more likely to attend the events with more motivation of event attraction and escape and excitement than family togetherness. Motivation of cultural exploration is also high for all socio-demographic groups of festival visitors. Thereby, cultural exploration and family togetherness are also highly important for attendees. The basic theme of the ITF was identified as a cultural festival which essentially motivates visitors to attend particularly for cultural exploration.

The findings of this paper solely reflect the motivational dimensions identified during a Turkish festival with a cultural lifestyle.

The field research of the study demonstrates the application of methodology by event managers to gain better understanding into visitor motivation, satisfaction, behavioral intention, event organization, and event theme.

The important theoretical contribution of the study is in the area of establishing a meaningful and empirical relation between motivation of festivals and cultural structure of community as part of the perceived socio-cultural impacts of festivals. This implies and empirically substantiates the common belief that festivals and events can be instrumental in enriching cultural life.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the priorities of event organisers (EOs) and venue managers (VM) in terms of evaluation criteria and avenues for advancing the development and implementation of banks of questions regarding customer satisfaction evaluation.

The results presented are based on a questionnaire distributed to a sample of EOs and VM which sought to identify their priorities with regard to customer satisfaction feedback.

The findings show that a significant proportion of respondents had never undertaken formal evaluation, citing time and resources as the key barriers. In addition, a wide range of satisfaction-related criteria were rated as important, with the most valued criteria often related to generalised areas, but failing to consider the motivations of individuals for event attendance, which also appears as a gap within evaluation literature. The research findings indicate that developing banks of evaluation questions is a complex task, due to the number of potential variables in terms of events and audiences.

In linking the priority areas identified by the respondents with evaluation literature and event attendee motivations, this paper proposes alternative ways of structuring and utilising banks of evaluation questions linked to attendee profiles and motivations. Its central premise is that evaluation of consumer satisfaction should be led by consumer motivations and expectations if it is to be viable, meaningful and aid future event development and enhancement. This raises many questions and avenues for future research, to progress the area of logistically feasible evaluation, which generates rich and meaningful data.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relative importance of various attributes (i.e. the total cost of attending, conference organizer, publishing opportunities for an academic career and personal development, reputation as measured by the number of conferences held, location and size) in terms of their ability to impact the decision of attendees in their selection of which academic conference to attend.

Conjoint analysis was used to examine the relative importance of various attributes to impact an attendee’s decision to select an academic conference (i.e. the total cost of attending, conference organizer, publishing opportunities for an academic career and personal development, reputation as measured by the number of conferences held, location and size).

The choice-based conjoint analysis revealed that the most crucial attributes for attending an academic conference were the total cost of attending the conference (28% of relative importance) and the conference organizer (28%).

Since the total cost of attending a conference is one of the top two attributes, conference organizers should reduce the costs as much as possible. Recommendations include choosing a university venue instead of a hotel or conference center and offering multiple options for registration passes (i.e. one-day pass). However, organizers should be careful about meals provided during the conference program, as meals have a positive effect on attendees’ decisions.

This study introduces to the literature a new indicator for selecting an academic conference – the reputation of the conference as measured by the number of times it had been held. In previous studies, this variable was not considered in the context of selecting an academic conference.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the experience of visitors with the Janadriyah festival.

An on-site intercept survey was conducted among a random sample of visitors of the festival. The survey was conducted by two field researchers between February 10 and February 25, 2014. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed only to those who agreed to respond to the survey. Out of 200 questionnaires distributed, 28 were incomplete and thus eliminated from the study. As a result, 172 questionnaires were accepted for the purpose of final analysis, representing a response rate of 86 percent.

There is a statistically significant contribution for both the first motivation (I participate in the Janadriyah festival to increase my cultural knowledge) and the fifth one (I participate in the Janadriyah festival to see new and different things and to enjoy a unique atmosphere). There is a statistically significant relationship between the most of services provided and the level of satisfaction. As well as, there is a statistically significant relationship between the perception and the level of satisfaction, also with the word of mouth communication. Finally, the results shown that behavioral intention had a positive influence on word of mouth communication.

There were time limits to this study as the research was conducted during the organization of the Janadriyah festival during its 26th session (February-March 2014).The research was also limited by place as it was conducted at the capital of Saudi Arabia, Janadriyah province.

The model of the study could be applied in similar studies for different festivals all over the world.

Increasing the promotional efforts to attract more visitors from different regions in the world. As it is observed that the vast majority of participants in the Janadriyah festival are local residents. In addition, there is a need to organize training programs to all staff participating in the organization of the festival supervised by academics and professionals. Organizing seminars during the festival in order to increase the awareness of local residents with importance of the cultural heritage and how to keep it. And at the end, the program of the festival has to be updated from one session to another in order to attract more attendees.

The integrated model of the study represent an added value to the research in the field of tourism festivals.

A desirable experiential environment is an essential source of competitive advantage in the festival industry. Understanding festival attendees' experience is imperative for festival organizers because attendees' experience is a predictor of their future behavior. With the experience economy concept of Pine and Gilmore (1998), the study identified four underlying dimensions of festival attendees' experience (education, entertainment, esthetics, and escapism) and examined the impacts of these experience dimensions on festival attendees' vividity of memory and loyalty.

Data were collected from online surveys completed by 338 attendees of VEISHEA festival. This study employed confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis, and structural equation modeling to achieve its goals.

Experience has a positive effect on vivid memory, which consequently influences loyalty. Each dimension of experience economy significantly influences vividity of memory. However loyalty is affected only by the entertainment and esthetics dimensions.

Festival marketers are advised to design activities that provide memorable experiential products and services for attendees based on the four dimensions of the experience economy.

The study is a pioneer in the evaluation of vividity of memory to the festival context.