Do They want Service Quality or Experience?: Based on Experiential Components of Festival.

Abstract

Introduction Tourism and leisure are behaviors that seek experiences from different daily life and routine. Therefore, those experiences have been crucial subjects and continuously studied (Wang, 1999). Tourists who visit festivals also desire enjoyment and pleasure. For that reason, people don`t just go to a festival, but visit there in order to gain a special experience. To support festival attractions, many researchers have studied quality service in terms of service management application (Getz, O`Neill, & Carlsen, 2001). Even though these contributed lots of festival management strategies, the essential attributes and understandings of festival experience itself were not accomplished. Practically, the Survey Index included in the national evaluation of `Korean Representative Culture Festival` by MCT (Minster of Culture Tourism) includes just 4 experiential items among 18 which were related to physical service. The observation index for the evaluation also has only 4 experiential items among 30 (MCT, 2005). People attend a festival in order to experience festival fun and a deeper meaning. Festival conveniences like parking and information or service quality are physical factors. Those factors are not nearly as critical to festival attendees as their sheer spontaneous enjoyment of the real-life activities that they can participate in. Lee (2006) has suggested a conceptual model of live festival experiences: he discovered components of experiential festival attribute (CEFA) and structured their relationships. Shim and Lee (2007) have tried to analyze and examine the CEFA using freelisting analysis. Their results supported the model and also suggested examination of different cases and methods in order to generalize the model. These two studies went a long way towards corroborating a model and empirical data analysis of festival experiences. Based on the above two studies, this research was to examine the influence of experiential festival variables as an emotional factor on the satisfaction and revisit intention compared with physical service quality variables as a cognitive response. This was to expand the understanding of festival feeling and the different components of festival logistics.

Methods The Jeongwol Daeboreum Fire Festival (JDFF) was created in 1997 with the objective of preserving the local traditions and stimulating the economy in the Northern Jeju area, South Korea. Upon completion of a short interview, respondents were asked to complete a questionnaire, resulting in a total of 220 final survey responses. The questionnaire consisted of four sections: live festival experience, service quality, behavior, and visitor information. Festival experience variables used in the research conducted by Fex-M (Lee, 2006) were measured using a five point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (disagree very much) to 5 (agree very much). The questions were in five categories, including five items of playfulness, four items of placeness, five items of sense of escape, four items of sense of community, and four items of sense of holiness. Principal components factor analysis conducted on the initial items resulted in four factors producing eighenvalues greater than 1. Scale refinement and reliability assessment consisted of calculating Cronbach`s alpha, a measure of internal consistency. Four Items that did not contribute to the factor`s overall reliability were eliminated. Eight items were related to playfulness and sense of escape (E1, Alpha level of .891), four items to sense of community (E2, Alpha level of .904), three items to sense of placeness (E3, Alpha level of .888), and three items to sense of holiness (E4, Alpha level of .864). Service quality items from MCT which were developed for festival evaluation had 14 items including evaluation of information, human service, souvenir, foods, parking, restroom, and so on. Four of items which were related to experiential festival attributes were excluded because of a clear comparison between service quality and experiential attributes of festival. The questions were measured using a five-point scale ranging from 1 (disagree very much) to 5 (agree very much). Principal components factor analysis was conducted on the initial items resulted in two factors producing eighenvalues greater than 1. One item that did not contribute to the factor`s overall reliability was eliminated. Four items were related to information (Q1, Alpha level of .738), and nine items to physical quality (Q2, Alpha level of .904). For the dependent variables, overall satisfaction and revisit intention which were measured using a five point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (disagree very much) to 5 (agree very much) were used to examine the influence of independent variables.

Results A stepwise multiple regression analysis was used to determine whether independent variables predicted overall satisfaction. All CEFA variables (E1 to E4) and the Q1 influenced overall satisfaction significantly. The Q2 variable was excluded because it did not influence dependent variable significantly. As expected, all CEFA variables had more influence on the overall satisfaction variance (E1, β=.457; E2, β=.224; E3, β=265; E4, β=.396) than did service quality variables (Q1, β=.214). The E1 variable which contained playfulness & sense of escape accounted for the largest amount of the overall satisfaction variance. As a group, these independent variables accounted for about 61% of the variance (F = 57.407, p<.001) (Table 1). Similarly, all CEFA variables (E1 to E4) and the Q1 variable also influenced the other dependent variable, revisit intention, significantly except the Q2 variable. As expected, all CEFA variables (E1, β=.363; E2, β=.228; E3, β=340; E4, β=.457) had more influence on the revisit intention variance than did service quality variables (Q1, β=.151). The E4 variable among the independent variables (Beta=.457), accounted for the largest amount of the revisit intention variance. As a group, these independent variables accounted for about 59% of the variance (F = 52.497, p<.001).

Conclusions and Discussions Festival events have their own particular nature and offer experiences that augment consuming products or tourism. Lee (2006) recommended the components of experiential festival attributes (CEFA) by reviewing the anthropology, sociology, psychology and leisure research, which were then integrated with the concepts of playfulness, placeness, sense of escape, sense of community, and sense of holiness. Shim and Lee (2007) used the CEFA for their research application and partially confirm it by using the freelisting method. This study was to examine the influence of festival experience variables on tourist satisfaction and revisit intention compared with service quality variables. As expected, all CEFA variables had more influence on overall satisfaction and revisit intention variance than did service quality variables. Therefore, utilization of CEFA is critical when planning festival programs and managing the festival settings. The goal of festival management needs to focus on the real-life experience of festival attributes. CEFA has shown that these psychological attributes of the festival attendees increase their festival satisfaction and influence positively their revisit behavior.