Re-enactment Events and Tourism: Meaning,Authenticity and Identity

Re-enactment events have began to play a significant role in the calendars of individual attractions, regions or even nations to generate media exposure, develop inbound tourism activity and raise the cultural heritage profile of a locality for community development and/or regeneration purposes. The (re-)presentation of cultural heritage in these forms creates a unique set of interactions between landscapes, local communities, tourists and heritage organisations. In the recent past however, re-enactment events have been subjected to increased debate and criticism as to their educational value and meaning and for their contribution to understandings of cultural heritage in post-modern consumer societies. This paper presents an interdisciplinary review of these debates and draws on small scale research findings to reassess the value of re-enactment events as a means of presenting heritage to audiences. The paper argues that re-enacted historical events achieve a range of purposes and provides examples of evidence from a range of differing perspectives including: public policy and event organisers; re-enactors and academics in the field. It argues that the professional heritage industry, tourists, and re-enactors all contribute to making such events meaningful and as such they represent unique frames through which to understand issues of authenticity and identity in the production and consumption of post-modern cultural heritage attractions.     

Does Consumers' Feeling Affect Their Quality of Life? Roles of Consumption Emotion and Its Consequences

Emphasizing the importance of attendees' consumption emotion, this study investigates the impact of festival attendees' consumption emotion on their psychological outcomes such as satisfaction, perceived quality of life and loyalty toward the festival. Structural equation modeling is used to test the dynamics of festival attendees' consumption behavior and its consequences. Results of this study indicate that festival attendees' emotional behavior has a positive relationship with their overall satisfaction, which is identified as a key predictor for their loyalty and quality of life. The study's theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed in detail along with its limitations. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On commodification: volunteer experiences in festivals†

This paper is about the creation of non-commodified volunteer experiences, for tourists and local volunteers participating in festivals. How is the tourist experience created when most of the traditional tourism demands are not fulfilled? And what are the experiences and how do they relate to different ‘regimes of value’? The experience context includes tourists who work together with locals voluntarily in a festival, where the volunteers pay for their own travel, food, overnight stay, and work for free. To gain more knowledge on the volunteers is important because local cultural life becomes more festivalized, most festivals are reliant on the involvement of volunteers, and the festivals gain an important role in an economy where even small places are engaged in branding [Löfgren, O. 2003. The new economy: A cultural history. Global Networks, 3, 239–254]. This paper uses a qualitative approach. Interviews were conducted (n?=?23) and participants were observed during four festivals in Finnmark, Norway. Nothing in the experiences was facilitated, and the experience creation occurred in the work tasks together with volunteer colleagues. It was like a holiday experience, without a stream of commodified moments. It was a value creation that could be seen as authentic and real, created in the interaction between the local and visiting volunteers.     

Hearing the authentic voice of stakeholders? Implications for governance of tourism strategy-making

Exploring tourism strategy-making in the light of complexity theory, this research examines the interactions that take place between stakeholders as strategy is developed and codified. It focuses on York, a significant UK tourist destination. Taking a strategy-as-narrative approach, it seeks to identify the plurality of stakeholder voices as the embodiment of the authentic voice of strategy. Key research themes are identified concerning how discourses, as manifestations of socially embedded networks of power, surface in narrative within strategy-making; what power relations govern which come to the fore and which are silenced. A heuristic device explains the power relations at work as the interplay of performative, attributed, and contextual power. The study points to the need for further work to understand how all stakeholders might be enabled to contribute equally to strategy-making, addressing the power differentials between actors through the allocation of appropriate resources.     

A research on social impacts of the Foça Rock Festival: the validity of the Festival Social Impact Attitude Scale†

The purpose of this study is to examine the validity of the instrument proposed by Delamere, T. A., Wankel, L. M., & Hinch, T. D. [(2001). Development of a scale to measure resident attitudes toward the social impacts of community festivals, Part I: Item generation and purification of the measure. Event Management, 7, 11–24] and to assess the local residents' perceptions of the Foça Rock Festival, which was held in Foça, Turkey. In order to achieve the validity of the instrument, confirmatory factor analysis with LISREL 8.8 was employed, the composite reliability, the estimated percentage of variance extracted by each construct, the discriminant and convergent validity were examined. Results indicated that the local residents' perceptions have two main dimensions with five sub-factors. Furthermore, the results also suggest that these two dimensions (social benefits and social costs) can be measured by 35 items instead of using all 47 items. The collective results indicate that when convergent and discriminant validities are achieved, construct validity is supported. The results also suggest that social benefits dimension is perceived positively by the local residents. On the other hand, other important findings of this study related to the social costs of the festival are the increases in traffic congestion, pedestrian traffic, ecological damage, litter and overcrowding.     

The effect of authenticity on visitors’ expenditure at cultural events

The main aim of this study is to analyse the influence of the perceived authenticity of cultural events and their products on shopping expenditure. The quantitative analysis is based on 1275 self-administered questionnaires collected among event attendees in three different Northern Italian Christmas Markets in 2008. In order to estimate separately the determinants of the propensity of respondents to shop and how much money they are willing to spend for each kind of purchase, we have adopted a double-hurdle model. The results show that tourists are more likely to spend and that they do spend more if they consider the event and the products sold to be authentic. This study also reveals that socio-demographic factors and visit motives are interrelated with authenticity perception and together affect the amount of personal expenditures during the event. Finally, some implications of the study are discussed.     

‘All that jazz’: the relationship between music festival visitors’ motives and behavioural intentions

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study investigated the relationship between visitors’ behavioural intentions (ex-post) and their motives (ex-ante) for attending a jazz festival. The aim was to discover whether a music festival brings additional intangible benefits. The research followed a quantitative approach by conducting a visitor survey at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival in South Africa. Structural Equation Modelling showed that music festivals have the potential to create benefits beyond the festival itself or the host destination, particularly fostering an appreciation of a music genre, increasing purchasing of music, and boosting music tourism. The findings showed that a music festival could have far-reaching benefits that can contribute to its legacy. It also showed that visitors’ motives have a unique relationship with their behavioural intentions, which emphasizes the need to market the festival accordingly.     

Classification of traditional cultural elements in temple street festivals using the fuzzy Kano model

This study aims to explain consumers’ expectations regarding the culture of temple streets and cultivates an identity system for local culture. The Kano model with fuzzy linguistic concepts was applied to the field observation of temple street festivals and the semi-structured interviews of local cultural directors, scholars of cultural centres, government officials, and cultural industry operators with data on traditional cultural elements. The findings show that “Religious temples”, “Custom activities and events”, “Local cultural industries”, and “Specialty and gourmet food” have a symmetrical impact on both satisfaction and dissatisfaction in proportion to the extent of traditional cultural element fulfilment. “Local stories” do not increase overall satisfaction if traditional cultural elements are exceeded but cause dissatisfaction if they are not fulfilled. Moreover, outer “Tangible”, middle “Behavioural”, and inner “Intangible” factors of attractive, one-dimensional, must-be quality transformed into contemporary image designs are amiably illustrated. These results provide a direction for managing satisfaction and a performance guideline for each activity in the process of creating temple street experiences that can increase satisfaction and reduce dissatisfaction.     

Authenticity,experience, and loyalty in the festival context: Evidence from the San Fermin festival,Spain

This study empirically investigates the relationships among authenticity, experience – measured by emotions (i.e. pleasure and arousal) along with satisfaction, and loyalty in the festival context. Structural equation modelling is employed to examine a sample of 211 visitors attending the San Fermin festival in Spain. Results show that authenticity positively affects experience, while on the other hand, only arousal has positive effects on satisfaction and festival loyalty. Satisfaction is positively associated with festival loyalty.