Host perceptions of music festival impacts: time and space matter?

ABSTRACT

Music festivals are growing phenomena worldwide. How a festival is perceived, interpreted and understood is an essential part of public response and attitudes toward the phenomena. Understanding dynamic and diverse host perceptions and attitudes toward the festival impacts can help planners ensure the effectiveness of the event planning and management. The study aims to monitor host perceptions of impacts of Beijing Strawberry Music Festival in time and space using longitudinal and comparative data. The findings suggest that there are both significant changes and consistencies in positive and negative perceptions of the music festival impacts over time; findings also suggest that residents from three distant zones share similar perceptions of the impacts over time in a local-wide area. The study offers a holistic insight into tourism impact research, and has practical implications for event management and planning.

KEYWORDS:

• Music festival
• tourism impacts
• longitudinal effects
• spatial effects
• host perceptions
• event management
• tourism marketing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Wenhui Wang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0433-0261

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [grant number 41571136].