A Conceptual Framework of Festival Visitors’ Behavioral Intentions

The purpose of this article is to develop a conceptual framework to determine the factors influencing visitors’ behavioral intention to attend festivals and events. The theoretical framework focuses on the relationship between experience quality, perceived value, satisfaction and behavioral intentions of the festival tourists. The diversity of growth and popularity of festivals and events have been growing and many communities are arranging different festivals and events as leisure and cultural recreation for their community members. Such arrangements have led to improvements in both local community lives and image. In order to increase visitor participation, it is important that they perceive good value in relation to their satisfaction and high quality in services. From previous research, it was evident that service quality, perceived value and satisfaction are some of the major factors that influence tourists’ behavioral intentions. In the context of festival tourism, little research has been conducted to test the relationship between quality, value, satisfaction and behavioral intention. In this paper a conceptual model has been proposed to examine whether experience quality has an impact on perceived value, which in turn is posited herein to affect satisfaction and behavioral intention. Several hypotheses have been proposed to test a research model in the context of festival tourism. In an ensuing study, the proposed model will further be tested empirically at a music festival named Malakoff occurring yearly in western Norway. The festival generates considerable interest and regional and national participation within the region.