An Integrated Model to Enhance Residents’ Support for Future Festivals Case Study: WOMAD (CACERES, 2018, SPAIN)

Abstract

Festivals are of great importance due to their social, cultural, economic and environmental impacts. Understanding the impacts of festivals and planning to maximize the positive impact of these festivals requires research and study in the geographical area of each region. These studies provide insights into the behavior of different variables. In this paper, residents “support for future festivals is examined on the basis of subjective well-being and how community feeling affects residents” perceptions of the social benefits of festivals. We conducted a structured questionnaire for 375 local residents in Caceres (Spain) during the annual WOMAD Festival (2018) to test the proposed integrative model using the (SEM) method. The result indicated that residents’ subjective well-being is a strong positive predictor of residents’ support for future festivals. Furthermore, the significant relationships between residents’ sense of community, perception of festivals, social benefits, and their subjective well-being were found to support each other. These findings could be valuable for central governments to pursue the policies to improve residents’ well-being and quality of life; they could also be beneficial for festival organizers in terms of mobilizing residents to enhance their support toward future festivals. Given the scattered findings of previous research studies and the lack of a multiple mediation model to expressly explore the linkage between residents’ sense of community, subjective well-being, resident behavioral intentions, and festival social benefits, rather than by simply through a single mediator, the present paper is the first study to evidence empirical explorations to date that address the association between these constructs in the context of tourism and festivals. Therefore, it provides guidance to future research as well.