An Investigation into Festival Visitor Motivation from the Organiser's Perspective

Abstract The aim of the study is to find out why festival organisers believe people are motivated to attend festivals in Scotland and why festival organisers feel this is important information to understand. The events and festival industry has emerged as a global industry of its own, with festivals becoming the fastest growing area of the leisure industry. Although extensive research has been carried with regards to festivals and visitor motivation, little research has been done exploring whether festival organisers perceive the motivation for attending festival differently to those who actually attend the festival; therefore there is a gap in the existing literature. Email questionnaires were distributed to 189 festivals in Scotland, using non-probability judgement sampling, consisting of a Likert-scale for the rating of motivational factors and open ended questions to gain information about the benefits of understanding this aspect. The data was then analysed for common themes and linkages to previous studies and literature. The study revealed that festival organisers believe that attendees are most motivated by "Entertainment" and "Enjoyment" and least by "Family Togetherness" and "Nostlagia/Reminiscing." These results are comparative with previous motivation studies although the motivation factor of "Escape" was rated much lower in this study providing the organisers view. Findings also suggest that festival organisers feel information on visitor motivations is beneficial; however, a low number of respondents suggested they conduct market research to discover this information. The majority of respondents recognised that understanding motivation would allow them to tailor festival programmes, create targeted marketing plans and maintain long term sustainability of the festival.ba_eveunpub1716_ethesesunpu