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Academic studies have sought to understand the motivations of festival and event attendees usually through single-event case studies. This approach has failed to generate a generalizable set of motivation items. In addition, there is increasing criticism in the literature of the common methodological framework used in festival motivation studies, due to a perceived over-reliance on motivations derived from the broader tourism and travel research, with too little attention to event-specific factors. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues by analyzing a sub-category of motivation studies, music festivals, in order to see if this approach can elicit a consistent set of motivation dimensions for the sub-category, which can in turn be compared and contrasted with the broader literature. A new case study of motivations to attend the 28th Macau International Music Festival (MIMF) is included to complement the existing music festival sub-category by adding a classical music and music festivals in Asia.

Motivation dimensions important to music festivals are compared to dimensions across the broader festival motivation literature to find similarities and differences. Factor analysis is used to identify the motivation dimensions of attendees at the MIMF and the results are compared to those of existing music festival studies.

Music festival goers are shown to be primarily motivated by the core festival offering, the music, in contrast to festival attendees in general, where socialization has emerged as the primary motivating element. The results of the additional case study support these findings.

In contrast to previous research, this study examines the possibility of identifying common motivations among festival attendees through studying festivals by sub-categories.

This paper explores the factors motivating people to attend the Dutch hardstyle festival, Defqon.1. This paper delivers new insights to festival attendance by including social and cultural factors in the motivational dimensions and considering a niche electronic music festival.

This research utilised qualitative methods to identify and gain detailed information about attendee's visitor motives. Eleven semi-structured in-depth interviews which focus on the influence of intangible features of visitor motivations were conducted.

The research result revealed an increased influence of social factors and decreased the effect of all other visitor motives. The subcultural ties amongst members of the hardstyle scene were identified as stronger than the ones of different electronic music scenes. The study concluded that social factors, such as friendships gain significant importance for stimulating return visits.

Contemporary music festivals, especially electronic events have not comprehensively been researched. Also, the effects of social and cultural factors on festival attendance have previously been neglected in research. Studies on popular electronic music genres, such as rave and hardcore, are from a sociological viewpoint. These studies revealed motivations of members of the subculture to be a part of the scene and to attend events.

This paper responds to a range of theory and industry reporting, to provide an informed narrative which explores the current state of accessibility at UK festivals for people who are Deaf or disabled and the potential implications of developments in ICT for enhancing design, marketing, operations and performances across all phases of festival delivery, in order to improve inclusivity and accessibility. To this end, the paper addresses the following question: What do representatives of the UK live music industry perceive as barriers to accessibility and exemplars of current best practice for music festival attendees who are Deaf or disabled? What do representatives of the UK live music industry consider as the role of ICT to increase accessibility for music festival attendees who are Deaf or disabled?

Primary research focused on supply-side considerations with a sample group of 10 UK live music industry professionals. The scope of the research was limited geographically to England and by artform to open-air music festivals, venues which host some music festival provision and a Sector Support Organisation. Open questions elucidated qualitative information around; awareness of accessibility and inclusivity initiatives; potential for co-creation; non-digital improvements; current technological influences; and potential digital futures for accessible “live” experiences. A conceptual framework was constructed and semi-structured face-to-face interviews were carried out with six respondents, and four respondents completed a structured, self-administered e-mail questionnaire.

Findings include: ICT can facilitate enhanced dialogue with existing and potential audience members who are Deaf or disabled to both; reduce existing social exclusion (Duffy et al., 2019) and improve the visitor experience for all attendees. All respondents agreed that physical enhancements are important and some mentioned communications and customer care. Respondents reported increasingly ambitious usages of ICT at music festivals, which may support suggestions of a virtual experience trend (Robertson et al., 2015). Online ticketing systems have potential to grant equal functionality to people who are Deaf or disabled, as recommended by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (2015). Respondents broadly welcomed the potential for positive impacts of ICT on increasingly accessible live experiences at music festivals which retained a sense of authenticity and “liveness”. Challenges around “as live” ICT-derived experiences were identified including risks of creating second-class experiences for Deaf and disabled attendees.

The limitations of this case study include the small sample size and limited scope.

Promoters should: consider further developing the co-creation of accessibility initiatives, utilising ICT to both deliver improvements and engage with potential audience members who are Deaf or disabled. Seek to pro-actively recruit staff members who are Deaf or disabled and significantly increase their programming of performers who are Deaf or disabled. Consider reviewing their ticketing processes for music festivals, to identify accessibility challenges for audience members and implement appropriate ICT-based solutions. Consider maximising accessibility benefits for audience members who are Deaf or disabled from existing ICT provision on site and explore additional bespoke ICT solutions at music festivals.

Adopting the best practices described across the festival sector may improve inclusivity for disabled people at music festivals and other events. Event management educators should consider reviewing provision to ensure that best practice is embedded around accessibility for audience members who are Deaf or disabled. Additional public funding should be provided to drive ICT-derived improvements to accessibility for audience members who are Deaf or disabled at smaller-scale music festivals. Further research should be considered around inclusive approaches to digital experiences within a music festival environment for audience members who are Deaf or disabled and tensions between accessibility and notions of “liveness”.

The “snapshot” of digital aspects of accessibility at UK festivals within this research is of particular value due to paucity of other research in this area, and it's narrative from varied industry professionals. The paper makes recommendations to promoters, academics and public funders, to attempt to advance inclusion (or at least to mitigate current exclusion) and identify directions for future research into accessible digital experiences at music festivals for people who are Deaf or disabled.

One of the most significant shifts in contemporary business thinking in the tourism and event industry is co-creation and the framework for adopting this collaborative approach is integral for achieving the fundamental goal of value creation. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of sustainable events by analysing value co-creation processes from the attendees’ perspective.

The methodical framework comprises two steps. First, the study analyses the literature related to festivals and value co-creation, with a focus on sustainable festivals. Second, data rooted research based on grounded theory is conducted, using 12 semi-structured interviews with music festival attendees.

Three distinct festival attendee categories were identified: the sustainable co-creation type, the calculating type and the experience type. Within each category, attendees have different attitudes, personal values and experiences as well as individual assessments of what exactly constitutes value and value creation. These three categories are regarded as key factors in describing different kinds of value co-creation processes in the festival context.

Considering these three types and addressing their personal values, beliefs and value perceptions will allow festival organisers to better manage the development of sustainable festivals and their role as value co-creators.

This paper addresses the need to better understand how value is created in a festival context. The application of grounded theory also considers scholarly calls for a deeper search into the meaning and essence of value for festival attendees.

This exploratory study aims to show that events can create awareness and facilitate behavioural change among attendees. Festivals and events can use the United Nations sustainable development goals as drivers of societal change and business growth. Unfortunately, the attendees to a benefit concert have not been investigated to date. This study fills this gap by segmenting attendees to a benefit concert aimed at eradicating poverty.

A quantitative destination-based survey was undertaken at the Mandela 100: Global Citizen Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2018. A simple random sampling method was used within a stratified sampling method, and 408 questionnaires were obtained.

Three psychographic segmentation variables were used: motives for attending the event (novelty, escape and socialization and cause advocating); behavioural intentions and change as a result of attending the event (cognition and awareness, loyalty-related behaviour, active engagement and travel-related behaviour); and global causes aimed at eradicating poverty that attendees regard as important to support (social, sustainability, fiscal, fundamental and elevated prosperity). The results revealed three distinct segments, proposing that an AID-typology applies to benefit concert attendees: advocates, inspirers and discoverers. Each group has either a high, moderate or low level of commitment towards the festival’s and other global causes.

Practical implications are suggested as guidelines to encourage advocacy and active involvement for global causes.

This study was conducted from a developing country’s perspective and contextualizes the role that events can play in advocating for specific causes and encouraging citizens to get involved.

The purpose of the study is to compare features of career development and fandom in frequent festival attendance in the context of Finnish music festivals.

The study uses a mixed methods research approach and employs two theoretical frameworks: theories of career development and fandom.

In frequent festival attendance, both festival career development and festival fandom are most clearly present in motivation development and social dimensions.

Strategically, frequent festivalgoers should be considered as crucial stakeholders, who might mobilize the co-creation of a sense of community or festival brand.

Music-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.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understandings of the complexity of stakeholder relationships and their impact on environmental practices in music festivals in Western Canada, but also to highlight how managers can leverage their festival platform for stakeholders to create new partnerships that foster and support primary values around sustainability.

We use a community-based participatory framework to guide this study, and qualitative research methods in the form of in-depth interviews and surveys at three separate music festivals within the interior of British Columbia, Canada.

The majority of patrons are aware of the environmental impacts of music festivals and are more likely to attend a festival with effective practices. By making environmental sustainability a core value of the festival and communicating environmental objectives with both stakeholders and patrons, managers can begin to alleviate the operational barriers to environmentalism.

One of the primary contributions of this study is that it provides management with deeper understandings of a wide range of barriers to effective environmental practices in Western Canada. We consult directly with both festival management and attendees about environmental practices. This paper presents a fuller perspective of how to move beyond simple measures and craft a more sophisticated and flexible environmental strategy that reduces risk, anticipates obstacles and greatly improves the odds of successful implementation.

The aim of this paper is to test a new proposal of a model to analyze emotional outcomes in relation to the key factors constituting the experience of a music festival.

This article first examines how emotions and intangible impacts are conceptualized and analyzed by different disciplines; secondly, this article exposes the relevance of musical emotions and the contextual elements in the generation of the music festival experience; the article then proposes a new model to assess the emotional impacts of music festivals, named the Emotional Impact of Music Festivals (EIMF). Finally, this article shows the test of the model through quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The findings reveal that perceived emotions in the music festival context should be based on the definition of musical emotions. At the same time, the model combines the different sources of emotions taken from validated tools in multiple academic disciplines. The new proposal enables the emotional outcome of the music festival experience to be identified and helps to understand the weight of the experience's main elements.

The new proposed model facilitates the research on music festivals and illuminates the key role of music when organizing festivals to enhance attendee experience. Finally, this model reveals the main elements required to obtain an intense emotional outcome in these types of events.

The study expands the different scales and model proposals in live events and combines existent musical emotion models from the psychological perspective with theoretical models from the intangible impact evaluation. This study shows a genuine test for a theoretical model that can be further developed. Finally, this study shows how the new tool EIMF can help music festival organizers to understand the weight of the constituting factors of festival experience and the results in applied studies.

With the increasing importance of social media in promoting events, understanding the relationship between event followers' motivations and their behaviors on an event's social media platform becomes a key success factor to attract event-goers. Previous studies on exploring the relationship between social media and event attendees have concentrated mostly on a Western context social media, for example, Facebook, and Western festivals; studies concerning the East or China are scant. This study uses the Strawberry Music Festival in China as a case study and researches its two official social media platforms: WeChat and Weibo.

The research explores the hedonic and utilitarian motivation of social media followers and investigates followers' browsing and participation behaviors as well as the influence of their usage behaviors on intentions to attend an event. A total of 190 valid responses were collected through an online questionnaire from social media followers of the music festival.

The findings reveal that both utilitarian and hedonic motivation have significant effects on browsing and participation behaviors. More importantly, browsing and participation behaviors also affect the intentions to attend an event and the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) effect.

The research results provide practical insights for event organizers regarding potential event-goers' usage patterns on social media platforms and their intention to visit events.

This study contributes to the authors’ understanding of the relationship between event attendance and social media behavior, in particular of the East.

The purpose of this paper is to report exploratory research into UK music festival attendees awareness of, and attitude towards, brands that sponsor music festivals. Sponsorship is an important revenue stream for music festivals, and, conversely brands perceive music festivals to be an effective channel through which to reach young target audiences. Further, there have been concerns expressed about the impact of alcohol sponsorship on drinking and health, but very little research has been conducted in this area.

A questionnaire was used as the primary method of data collection in order to investigate brand recall, brand awareness, brand use, brand attitude and any concerns about the potentially negative impacts of sponsorship, and specifically alcohol sponsorship.

There is evidence to suggest that brand sponsorship of music festivals has an impact on brand recall, awareness and attitude to the brand, but little evidence of impact on brand use. On the other hand, there are variations between brands and festivals. The values associated with sponsoring brands are largely positive. Some respondents indicated concerns about the consequences of sponsorship, particularly in relation to alcohol sponsorship.

This exploratory study has started a long overdue investigation into music festival attendees views on sponsorship. There is considerable scope for a larger scale study to investigate the impact of sponsorship over a larger number of brands and festivals, and to learn more about the sponsorship arrangements that have the most impact.