What motivates people to attend music festivals?
1108645, 1106949, 1108803, 1105680
Introduction The focus of this research project was to explore ‘what motivates people to attend festivals?’
The Questionnaire Replies to questionnaire: 105
Before designing our questionnaires we consulted relevant secondary research to provide an insight into what has already been done, what there is that still needs to be looked into, and currently accepted ideas within this subject. Having looked at these one model stood out as being interesting and provided room for exploration as well as highlighting a potential area for improvement originally designed and created by Getz and Cheyne 2002 (cited by Ryan, C 2002) this questionnaire was based around this concept and model as seen below, diagram 1. This model identifies three key areas that motivate people to attend special events; Generic leisure/travel motives, Extrinsic motives and Event-specific motives. As such we then designed the questionnaire in a way that allowed us to relate back to these three areas and allow more in depth analysis. The questionnaire asked what were the three words people most associated with music festivals. This Wordle shows the responses with the most common word being FUN .
Descriptives Fact Box!
It was also noted that much of the previous research on attendance at music festivals has concentrated on the economic impacts of festivals and the expenditure of attendees, as noted by Pegg and Patterson (2010, p86). Therefore it was felt that more research into the motives of attendees would be useful to give a broader picture of the music festival scene as a whole.
Gender : 64% women, 36% men Age range: 18 – 63 Median age: 20, mode age: 19 Students: 68% - 53% at Chichester University Did not attend music festivals – 40% The majority of people heard about festivals through word of mouth: 74 respondents
Many tests were run on the received raw data from the questionnaires filled out and this poster will highlight four key areas we found interesting, again relating back to the model. Respondents went for the following reasons: because their friends were going: 78% because they were a fan of the artists appearing: 86% to gain new experiences: 70% to be with family: 20% the good atmosphere of festival: 74% an opportunity to hear live music: 83% to broader their musical outlook: 57% Respondents who thought ticket prices too high but went anyway: 50%
Tests and Results Generic leisure/travel motives Getz and Cheyne define generic leisure/travel motives as something that is “freely chosen for its intrinsic rewards”. They go on to define is as having a number of dimensions that can clearly be realized at events such as “lessening on the focus on the self”, “feelings of freedom or lack of constraint” and “decreased awareness of the passage of time”
The high importance of other factors was rated as follows: Facilities: 64%; Safety: 70%; Environmental Impact: 44%; Reputation of Festival: 79%; Distance to travel: 65%; Transport facilities: 60%
For this area it was decided to look into escapism and how much of a motivator it would be for people to attend. This was incorporated into the questionnaire as a Likhert question asking their opinion for the heading ‘I like to escape from routine’ with a range of answers listed 1-5.
Most popular festivals – Reading 21, Glastonbury 8, V Festival 7 attendees
After gathering the data this was split into those that attended and those that did not attend. These two groups were then compared with their answers given for the escape question to search for a significant difference. Hypothesis
Diagram 1
A One-Tailed Mann Whitney test was conducted to determine if a significant difference of opinions about attending festivals to escape routine existed between attendees and non-attendees. A null hypothesis of no significant difference and an alternative hypothesis of a significant difference were established and a 95% confidence level was assumed.
What this identifies is that escapism is a motivator for people to attend festivals, as those that have attended responded that they did attend festivals to escape from routine significantly more than those that did not (53% of all attendees agreed). This in turn demonstrates generic leisure as a motivator and supports the model the research is based on.
The difference was significant U =931, p 0.004 <0.05. Therefore the null hypothesis can be rejected and we can assume that there is a significant difference of opinions about attending festivals to escape routine existed between attendees and non-attendees. Opinions on escapism are influenced by attendance or non-attendance and attendees regard escapism more of a motivator than non-attendees.
Event-specific motives Getz and Cheyne define benefits obtained through participation in events as involving the event-goer, such as “social and cultural processes that might be invisible and subtle, such as community-building and reinforcement of values all of which might be ‘belonging and sharing’.” (Ryan, 2002, p139).
Extrinsic Motives Getz and Cheyne define extrinsic motives as those that are unrelated to any specific appeal of the event itself. (Ryan, 153). I.e. obligation or incentives such as cheaper ticket prices. It was decided to look further into the latter to see if cheaper prices had an influence on motivation; would people attend if they were lowered. From the data there were 40% non-attendees and 60% attendees. Initially it was observed that a large amount of people in the non-attendee group had said they would go to music festivals if ticket prices were cheaper (52%) as illustrated in the pie chart below. Considering this it was decided to look further into ticket prices and run a test that included both attendees and non-attendees with the variable being their response to the question to try and establish a significant difference with the expectation of non-attendees having a much larger percent of ‘yes’ answers. Hypothesis A Mann Whitney test was conducted to determine if a significant difference of opinions about attending festivals if the price of tickets was cheaper existed between attendees and non-attendees. A null hypothesis of no significant difference and an alternative hypothesis of a significant difference were established and a 95% confidence level was assumed.
The difference was significant U =934, p 0.002<0.05. Therefore the null hypothesis can be rejected and we can assume that there is a significant difference of opinions about attending festivals if the price of tickets was cheaper between attendees and non-attendees, and that opinions on ticket prices are influenced by attendance or non-attendance.
Overall though in spite of this it did still help justify the idea that cheaper prices would act as an extrinsic motivator to attend music festivals as seen from the non-attendee group in addition to the attendee group through a large response of agreement which in turn supports the model the questionnaire is based around.
For this research social influences were looked into from the questionnaire through questions such as asking whether respondents had attended the events within a group. This was then used to look at responses to other questions such as their importance on factors like facilities or safety. Initially when the data was looked at by itself it looks as if people that attend festivals placed a high importance on facilities.
Conclusion
Upon further inspection, it was discovered that actually in contrast to what was expected; people that did attend were even more likely to attend more festivals if the ticket prices were cheaper, something that was intriguing and surprising. However when this was explored further by separating those that had attended with groups there was a dramatic change in figures. As it turned out when people attended with groups their opinions on the importance of factors such as facilities dropped hugely, the majority of them answering that they either strongly disagreed or disagreed with the notion that they placed a high importance on facilities. This is illustrated in the bar chart below.
However on reflection wording the questions differently would have enabled more information to be found and would have avoided what could have been a lot of confusion with participants and their answers. The question was worded in a way that was ambiguous for those that had attended and did not specify whether they would still merely attend festivals if ticket prices were reduced or if they would attend more festivals with a cheaper ticket price. This therefore could have had a significant effect on the responses.
This survey was undertaken to find out what motivates people to attend music festivals. By looking at the framework models of Getz and Cheyne and Kim the survey found that various factors both motivate and constrain attendees at music festivals. The survey confirmed the findings of previous research and identified that more research is needed both into motivators and de-motivators to attendance.
From this research, it has been shown that there are many motivations for people to attend music festivals. As was noted by Pegg and Paterson (2010, p97) visitors to festivals are not a homogenous group and there are many points of differentiation. This can be used by festival organisers to target their audiences more specifically and create niche markets within the whole event to attract a wide range of audiences.
Next Time... The questionnaire started off with questions to determine the demographics of the respondents. From this it was determined that the median age was 20 which was excepted as a high proportion of the respondents where students at the University of Chichester. The questionnaire then looked at the respondents motivation in attending a music
Mediating Factors In addition to these three key areas highlighted by the model being essential, we recognised through use of other literature that there was a weakness in this model; that it did not take into account mediating factors and therefore what constrained or de-motivated people from attending events. This is important as this has the effect of stopping people attending and had these issues been dealt with could potentially then motivate them in the future. A new model was then found that conformed to our updated ideas as seen below in diagram 2. In recognition of this, additional questions were added that would provide data to then be analysed and see if there were in fact reasons that would cause people not to attend a music festival, which consequently we then formed into a test. In this case safety was chosen and whether it had a difference in the opinions of males and females.
Hypothesis Several Two-Tailed Mann Whitney tests were conducted to determine if a significant difference of opinions about the importance of constraints existed between males and females. A null hypothesis of no significant difference and an alternative hypothesis of a significant difference were established and a 95% confidence level was assumed. In the case of Safety, Facilities and Environment the differences were significant. Taking safety as an example U =882, p=0.006<0.05. Therefore the null hypothesis can be rejected and we can assume that there is a significant difference of opinions about the importance between males and females, and that opinions on constraints are influenced by gender.
From this it can be see that in fact certain factors such as facilities, safety or environment do have a huge impact on peoples motivation to attend, with females placing a much higher importance on factors such as facilities (which are notoriously bad at festivals) than males, additionally supported by the Mann Whitney test. If these constraints were looked at in more depth and changed by festival managers they could potentially see an increase in attendance. This highlights a key area where more research is needed.
festival.
Having identified this it was decided to run a test on this to see if there was a significant difference. Hypothesis A Mann Whitney test was conducted to determine if a significant difference of opinions about the importance of facilities existed between those that attended with a group and those that did not. A null hypothesis of no significant difference and an alternative hypothesis of a significant difference were established and a 95% confidence level was assumed. The difference was significant U =178.5, p 0.038<0.05. Therefore the null hypothesis can be rejected and we can assume that there is a significant difference of opinions about the importance of facilities between people that attended festivals as a group and those that did not, and that opinions on the importance of facilities are influenced by groups/social belonging.
Firstly gender was separated to look specifically at their answers. The results were put onto a bar chart.
What this shows is that social groups and belonging can have a very significant effect on motivation to attend events and countering constraints that may have otherwise caused them not to attend. By attending as a group factors such as facilities became very unimportant to them, maybe due to sharing the same situation with others making it more endurable or simply by being in a group they did not care so much about negative impacts due to having a better atmosphere and so on.
The questionnaire was originally written to see what motivated people to attend festivals. However as 40% of respondents did not attend festivals more questions could have been written specifically targeting the reasons they did not attend. This could be an area requiring further investigation in future surveys.
It would also have been useful to have questioned those who have attended, but would not be interested in attending again. This would give further indication of the demotivators to attendance.
Some of the questions in the survey were worded quite generally and therefore the results were not as clear as they could have been. In future it would be helpful to structure questions more carefully as reported in the extrinsic motives section.
There were not many ratio questions in the survey which restricted the tests we were able to carry out and the information we were able to gather. It would have been useful to have included questions such as ‘how much would you be prepared to spend on a ticket?’ and ‘for how many years have you been attending festivals?’
On reflection, it was decided not use the postcode mapping as the questionnaire did not capture the relevant information. It was not specified in the question whether this was to be term time or home postcode and therefore no conclusion could be drawn as to whether people attended local music festivals or otherwise.
Diagram 2
However, as it was noted in the questionnaire results that 65% of people placed ‘distance to travel’ as either important or very important, it would have been an interesting question to have had more information on, and could have been very relevant for postcode mapping.