Visitor Motivations to Attend Events free essay sample

Mullins (2008) describes motivation as this force which drives any person to show a specific behaviour towards any condition or situation or things. There are mainly two different natures of motivation one is come from person’s internal desire to do action. It is always self-applied and self accomplishment in individual. This kind of motivation is referring to the intrinsic motivation (Bratton et. al, 2010). While we discuss about the motivation of event visitor it also fall on this types of motivation visitor attend in the event to fulfil their personal desire. But there are different factors of motivation which fulfil visitors desire. In the other hand extrinsic motivation works on external level of individuals. Every individual have expectation of external tangible outcomes like financial rewards, bonus, pay increase, profit share, and promotion in their job (Bratton et. al, 2010). The festival and events have extensively increased in number. Along with that its visitor also increased (Lee, 2000). Now a days events and festivals giving economy support to the hosting community or party. Its becoming an important tool for development for the community. Every year festivals and events are popular and visitor travel a long journey to participate. There are different kinds of events and festivals for example Sports, Cultural, Tourism, Music, Religious. Visitors of the events and festivals have their own purpose to attend on it. Each single visitor has motivation to attend on any kinds of events. In other words visitors motivations to attend events and festivals are different. We can find visitor with different motivation in the same event. There are also some common motivational factors for visitors to attend different kinds of event above mention. e there are some common motivational factor in different kinds of events and different motivation factor in same event. There are some unique motivational factors for some events which we cannot find in other events. Here we are going to discuss about the common motivation factors of different kinds of festivals as Food festival, sport festival music festival and cultural festival and their unique motivation factor in each kinds of festival. Food and wine festival Food and wine festivals have becoming an important part of the special festival. It also an attraction points of tourist. Many tourists attend food or wine festivals to taste foods and wine. They experience special types of food and wine from these kinds of festivals [ (Hall amp; Mitchell, 2001) ]. As it is one of the important tourism activities Food and Wine festivals targeted to the tourist from international and local as well (Chang, 2011), (Chartersa amp; Ali-Knightb, 2002). Chang 2011 study on the visitors motivation to attend a food festival in the Old Town Spring SpringFest which is a regional food festival in Old Town organized every year in March. The town located 20 miles north of Houston, Texas. Old town is a historic 1900s railroad town. He studied the motivation of the visitor in 10,000 populations which is the number of visitors in the festival every year. After study of motivation of visitor from different demography like age, gender, marital status, education, income he came with many motivations factors in food festival. The top five dimensions of motivation and more other motivation factors are fun, to get out in the open air, heard about festival and it sounded like fun, for variety of things to see and do, to have a change from daily routine. He also found more activities which motivates visitors to attend in the festival. These are wine, escape, food, known group socialization, external socialization, art etc. Kwang-Soo, Park Yvette Reisinger Hyun-Jung Kang studied to identify the major factors that motivate visitors in wine and food festival. The objective of this study was to identify the major factors that motivated visitors to attend the South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Miami Beach, Florida, and determine whether these factors varied among the visitors from the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia. They survey on 475 visitors to South Florida. In this study Forty-four motivational items were analyzed. The top most motivational factors were the desire to taste new wine and food, enjoy the event, enhance social status, escape from routine life, meet new people, spend time with family, and get to know the celebrity chefs and wine experts. Yuan et. al (2004) were also done one research on visitor motivation on wine festival and conclude that most important single reason for visiting festival was wine testing. According to their study, education and learning about wine, meeting the winemaker, socialising and having a day out and entertainment were reasons for their attendance at the festival (Yuan et. l, 2004). From above studies we can understand some important motivational factors of food and wine festivals which are testing food and wine, knowledge about food and wine, socialization, fun, family togetherness, escape, change from daily routine etc. Sport event Sport events help to generate revenue. Sports events represent a major area of event revenue contributing economic benefits t o cities and regions. Whilst explain that attendance at sports events is recognised as an important leisure and entertainment activity (Shamir amp; Ruskin, 1984). Funk describe that visitors desire to watch sport event occurs within five stages which are need recognition, tension reduction , drive state, want pathway, and goal behaviour. Here this needs illustrates how a need recognised fulfil by seeking way that satisfy the need and received benefit from them (Funk, 2008). John Hall, Barry O’Mahony and Julian Vieceli (2010) study about the motivation of the visitor in sport event . Their study identifies the antecedents of sports event attendance among 460 respondents who were surveyed in Melbourne. Their study was related to the motivational factor for the sport. They combined the motives of visitor in seven different dimensions as entertainment; emotional arousal, back room, true fan, front room, event and social factor there are fun, excitement, the arousal, friend and family. They found that financial and economical condition also influence to the motivation. Price of tickets or perceived value of the sport product are fall into controlled factor which can controlled but the average income of the population and economic condition of the country are fall into uncontrolled factor which cannot controlled by event organiser. There are also some factors which called front room and back room factor. Back room factor are factors amenable to management control that contributes to the overall experience this includes parking, ease of getting a seat and stadium accessibility. Front room factor Facilities or elements of the event experience that are under the control of management. These front room factors relate to factors, which could be said to directly influence the spectator’s enjoyment of the event experience, which include alcohol and smoke free zones. True fan factor Attendees for whom the enjoyment of the game itself is most important. They are interested in the competitive nature of the event, the process the outcomes and the performance of the team or individual that they support. Kevin Filo, Daniel C. Funk and Danny OBrien investigate motivates of the participants attachment to a charity sport event. They come with four findings in which first was hobby of charity giving , second was social, reciprocity, self-esteem, need to help others in which they focused more on the charitable cause. Third group of attendants also motivated by the factors of second group but they are less focused on the charitable cause. Fourth finding of the study was the motives for charitable giving make a stronger contribution to attachment for an event with a more prominent charitable cause, while the recreation motives make a stronger contribution to attachment to an event with a less prominent charitable cause. Overall sport events have five to six dimensions of motivation to attract its visitors. Socialization, escape, Event attachment, Family and friends etc. furthermore there are some more motivational factors as true fan, drama, etc which we will discuss later. Music Festival Numbers of musical festival organised every year. According to Bowen, and Daniels (2005) music festivals are unique and special event which attract visitor to hear and view the performance (Bowen amp; Daniels, 2005). They had done the research to find more about the motivations for attending a large, multi-day music festival. To find out motivation they conduct interview with visitor on the event site of Celebrate Fairfax, an annual music festival held in Virginia (USA). In the study difference factors of visitors motivations were analyzed by dividing into three categories as Discovery, Music and Enjoyment. Factors included in these three categories were Increase knowledge of local culture, be with people from community, experience new and different things, recovery from hectic pace, listen to music, special appeal , family and friend togetherness, other non musical attraction, and party and have a fun. From the same study they try to find out whether music matters in musical festival or not? In the answer of this question authors conclude that music is important to music festival but there are some visitor for them music is not more important. This study suggested that it is better to other non-musical factors in musical festivals. Because musical is no more important for some visitors attend on musical festival. To attract non-musical visitors event need to have some non-musical motivational factors such as socialization, fun and etc. along with musical performance. Gelder and Robinson also agreed with Bowen and Daniels that music festivals need some non-musical experience. When completed the comparative study of visitor motivation for music festival from Glastonbury and V Festival two largest music festivals in UK with 200,000 visitors. They suggested to V Festival, that it needs to include non-musical components on it as socialization, fun, and enjoyment [ (Gelder amp; robinson, 2009) ]. Formica and Uysal (1996) were analyzed Twenty-three motivation items including them into five different dimensions of motivation as excitement and thrills, socialization, entertainment, event novelty and family togetherness while comparing festival motivations of residents and non-residents for Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy. As a result they found socialization factor affect to the residential visitor and non residential visitor are motivated from entertainment factor (Formica amp; Uysal, 1996). Cultural events There are different literatures and researches have done on motivation of visitor for cultural festival. In 1996 Schneider and Backman have done one study on motivation of the cultural festival visitor in Jerash Festival for culture and art festival of Jordan. In the study they tried to find out if the motivation factors are applicable for outside of North America or not? In that study they analyzed twenty three factors of motivation in five different dimensions as family togetherness/ socialization, social/leisure, festival attributes, escape and event excitement. The result how that in spite of differences in importance of factors of motivations, the scale developed in United State was also reliable to other parts of the world like Arabic country and South Korea as well (Schneider amp; Backman, 1996). Formica and Uysal explored the motivation of visitor for Spoleto Festival, a cultural festival in Italy in 1998. In the study they investigated on twenty-three motivation items with six factors as socialization/entertainment, event attraction/excitement, group togetherness, cultural/historical, family togetherness and amp;site novelty. In the conclusion of the study they suggest that there are different in motivation between loyal and fair according to their age, income and marital status. (Formica amp; Uysal, 1998). In 2000 Lee compared the motivation factors of cultural festival between Caucasian and Asian visitors in the Asian setting of the Kyongju World Cultural Expo. In the expo there are performances from 48 different countries. In his research, he studied on 32 motivation items categorising on seven different dimensions. The seven dimensions which studied by Lee were cultural exploration, family togetherness, escape, novelty, external group socialization, event attractions and known-group socialization. From this study Lee found that the motivation level of Caucasian visitors was slightly high then of Asian visitors at Kyongju World Culture Expo. There was high motivation in regarding to cultural exploration and event attractions for both types of visitors. But the factor family togetherness found little bit weak to motivate in that expo (Lee, 2000). Lee et. al (2004) studied on the festival motivation by nationality and satisfaction. Purpose of the study was to find out the importance of festival market segmentation based on visitor motivation for promotion of event or festival. To study about segmentation of visitor they select the 2000 Kyongju World Culture Expo organised in Kyongju, South Korea. In the expo over 9000 artists from different countries performed for 87 days between September to November. According to this article More than 1. million visitors visited the expo in 2000. In this study authors identified six motivation dimensions for visitors attending the 2002 World Culture Expo as cultural exploration, family togetherness, novelty, escape, event attractions, and socialization. Among all dimensions cultural exploration found the high portion of motivation in visitors (Lee, Lee, amp; Wicks, 2004). Analysis of motivation Co mmon motivation factors After reviewing the work of different authors on motivation of events visitor, we can conclude that most of motivation items in every kinds of events are common. e can combine them in five to seven different dimensions as socialization, family togetherness, novelty, escape, event attractions/ Novelty, learn and explore culture and Excitement or thrills (Chang, 2011) (Bowen amp; Daniels, 2005) (Formica amp; Uysal, 1996). Socialization: socialization is a desire to interact with a group and its members. There are two types of socialization internal and external socialization. Internal means being with friend or the people already know. External means meeting new people. Family togetherness: this is the desire to enhance family relationship. People motivated by this factor attend event to seek the opportunity to be with family, relatives and friends. At the same time they have desire of doing things together. Escape: Escape from daily routine and the things which we see or do everyday. It is a Desire to have change in usual demands of life, and desire to have some change to minimize the life’s stresses. Learning or exploring cultures – learn about or explore other cultures. Visitors motivated with this factor have a desire to gain knowledge on different kinds of cultural practices and celebrations. Excitement or thrills – desire to do some stimulation things.