Essay about attendee motivations in events experience Essay

Introduction

The events field has evolved a lot these last decades with the increasing of the number of events like sport, music festivals, art exhibitions etc. Motivation or the desire to attend a cultural event such as a music festival or an exhibition in a gallery is not obvious. Motivation in general can be defined as the “an internal factor that arouses, directs, and integrates a person’s behaviour” (Iso-Ahola 1980:230). In events sector the experience is also important because different people can have different judgements for the same event because of certain factors such as the organization, the atmosphere etc.

By extension it is important to know the motivations of attendees because we can change what they don’t like, communicate in another way to motivate them to come in an event.

Main section

Factors of motivation:

In their study Crompton & McKay (1997) have discovered that there were 6 factors of motivation which are the following: the cultural exploration, the novelty/regression, the recover equilibrium, the known group socialization, the external interaction and finally the gregariousness.

To make this study they have taken a sample of 1920 people.

1.1 Cultural exploration

The results of Crompton &McKay (1997) show that the main motivation inside cultural exploration is at 70% the desire “to experience customs and cultures different from those in my own environment” which shows the motivation to first be more open minded than before the experience. The least motivation is “attend cultural events that I do not normally have an opportunity to go to” at 51%. So, for the sample chosen it’s important to be open minded when you go to attend in an event.

1.2 Novelty/regression

We can define the novelty as “a desire to seek out new and different experiences through pleasure travel as motivated by a need to experience thrill, adventure and surprise, and alleviate boredom” (Lee & Crompton,1992). Mc Kay and Crompton have showed that at 40% the attendees “don’t plan the fiesta in detail” which is the least criteria in the category and the main one is that they “seek adventure in fiesta”. We can say that Crompton and McKay think that people like unexpected in their experiences.

For Tramlines festival they upgrade their offer. At the beginning the festival was free thanks to subventions of the council and the support of Hallam FM but these 2 partners reduced progressively the amount of money given and have to do a paying festival: it permits to welcome more artists and to diverse their offer like places to see a film, places to discuss with artists in order to have a wider audience;

1.3 Recover equilibrium

At 76% in the Crompton and McKay’s study (1997) people attend fiestas in order “to reduce built-up tension, anxieties, and frustrations”. On the contrary in the O’Regan, Choe & Yap’s study (2017) only 56% of people use festivals to “reduce built-up tension, anxieties, and frustrations”. The main reason to go to a festival according to O’Regan, Choe & Yap is (2017) because “it sounded like fun, entertaining, and exciting”. In Crompton & McKay’s study the least important factor in this item is that people attend to events like fiesta to “avoid getting in a rut”. This shows that according where we live we don’t have the same behaviour.

1.4 Known group socialisation

It is important to define first what is socialization. Socialization is a desire to interact with a group and its members. There are two types of socialization: the internal one which is when you know already someone and the external one which you meet new people. Sometimes we go to an event because we know that our friends go to: it means that we are not necessarily interested in. Crompton & McKay showed that at 66% people go to a fiesta to be with their friends. Moreover O’Regan, Choe & Yap (2017) have the same conclusion for wine events: almost 85% of Chinese people go to a festival to spend time with their family.

1.5 External interaction

Only 66% of Chinese attendees of a wine event (O’Regan, Choe &Yap, 2017) go to meet new people with similar interests than them. It’s funny that in the Crompton & McKay’s study there was the same result. But in the Crompton and McKay’s study this item is in the first rank. Therefore, maybe mean that depending of the culture, your

1.6 Gregariousness

The study of Crompton and McKay (1997) showed that people don’t like to go alone to an event: 64% think that go to an event with a friend is” always more fun than going by yourself” and 61% don’t like to go to Fiesta alone. If we want to go an event it is because we like to be in a company of other people that we know or not.

Recommendations

The study about motivation in events experience for attendees in for me can be sometimes a little bit because when you are with a group you can be influenced by what other people of the crowd answer. Also the study of Crompton and McKay (1997) is not totally representative to my mind because the majority of the sample is composed of women (66%)

Conclusion

In events field you can have a lot of factors of motivation such as these explained previously which are exploration, novelty, socialization, gregariousness. They are really useful for events organizers because it allows to them to improve their offer and give better and better experiences to the attendees. In other words it helps them to design the event. Moreover, each event has its own motivations

References

Iso-Ahola, S.E. (1980). The social psychology of leisure and recreation. Dubuque, Iowa: Dubuque, Iowa: W. C. Brown Co. Publishers.

Crompton & McKay, Motives of visitors attending festival events, (1997). Retrieved from the website:

Michael O’Regan, Jaeyon Choe & Matthew Yap, Attendee motivations at an international festival of wine in China, (2017), p 455. Retrieved from:

Case study used: Tramlines