Potential for collaboration among agricultural food festivals in Korea for cross-retention of visitors

Abstract

This study examines visitor intentions to attend different agricultural food festivals within the same region to explore whether they can collaborate to promote cross-visits. Building upon the literature on co-branding and satisfaction, this study proposes the direct effect as well as the mediating roles of involvement and variety seeking between visitor satisfaction with a current festival and behavioral intentions to visit similar festivals. The results found that all relationships appeared to be positive and significant as conceptualized and visitor intentions to attend similar festivals were as high as those to visit the festival that had been attended again. Furthermore, comparison of three models suggested that the partial mediation model (PMM) is a significant improvement over the direct effect (DEM) and full mediation (FMM) models. This study seeks to make both theoretical and practical contributions to agricultural food festivals and rural tourism, specifically to the cross-retention potential of visitors to relevant festivals.