Name: Meng Ting, Lian
English 2100T
Professor. Cambridge
Date: 11/30/2018
Lee, Jin-Soo, et al. “Examining the Role of Emotional and Functional Values in Festival Evaluation.” Journal of Travel Research, vol. 50, no. 6, Nov. 2011, pp. 685–696, doi:10.1177/0047287510385465.
Summary
The research paper “Examining the Role of Emotional and Functional Values in Festival Evaluation” begins with talking about community. The festival can promote the local economy, attract social cohesion and strengthen a destination image for the community. Hosting a festival can play a vital role in the community and help more people to understand the destination’s culture, traditions, and racial background. The research aimed to explore the motivation behind the participation of festival visitors and determined how visitors’ values affect their own behavioral intentions and satisfaction levels. Others think that the reason why visitors are willing to participate in the festival was that their “functional value”, but the authors reveal that “functional value” was a one-dimensional value, it’s too simple and narrow. Therefore, it can not reflect a broader and richer vision of the festival. This is also the reason why “functional value” is easy to be misused in different ways. Multi-dimensions include: “functional value” and “emotional value.” The authors claim that multi-dimension is the roots to attract visitors to participate in the festival. Only the existence of both “functional value” and “emotional value” can attract visitors. These two values can bring a huge contribution to visitor’s behavioral intentions and satisfaction levels. They led more visitors to participate in different community festivals and it helps the festival organizer to understand visitor’s opinions, in order to better manage and design festivals.
In the research, the authors investigate the values of visitors and the consequences of these values. They think the value was the media between festival quality and satisfaction level. The authors mainly focus on the “functional value” and “emotional value.” “Functional value” is “utilitarian” value. “Utilitarian” value is the trade-off between quality and benefit. It ignores the dimensions of people’s inner thoughts and emotions, but it includes products, services, and facilities. “Emotional value” is “hedonic” value. Through satisfying human being’s needs to gain trust and loyalty, it includes natural environment, social opportunities, and cultural experiences. The study predicts the “festival quality dimensions” connects with emotional and functional value, an Emotional value is positive affects visitors’ “satisfaction levels” or “behavioral intention” than functional value and visitor satisfaction is also strongly connect to behavioral intentions. In the research and investigation process, the authors finally conclude that functional value and emotional value are essential, but compared “functional value” to “emotional value,” which tends to affect visitors’ behavioral intentions and satisfaction levels to participate in festivals.
Analysis
“According to the organizing committee of the Boryeong Mud Festival (2009), 2067000 domestic visitors (95.2%) and 104000 international visitors(4.8%) participate in the 12th Boryeong Mud Festival … Thus an on-site intercept survey was conducted for individual domestic visitors by 10 well-trained students from the Department of Hotel and Tourism Management at a university in Seoul… Emotional and functional values, satisfaction, behavioral intention were employed using 5-point Likert-type scales ranging from strongly disagree (5) to strongly agree(1)” (Lee et al.. 689). In other words, “intercept survey” would be the way to evaluate the motivation behind visitors’ participation. Trainers used a range of
scale to understand people’s value, behavior, and satisfaction “to obtain a representative sample…the survey was administered for the whole period of the festival, including both weekdays and weekends…so that the data could represent a wide range of respondents who had participated in various throughout the festival.” (Lee et al.. 689). In order to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data, the researchers sought the opinions of different visitors and provided the diversity of research.
“The respondents were 46% (male) and 54% (female) in this study.They were mostly bachelor’s degree holders (65%), followed by two-year college degree holders (21%). The most prevalent respondent age category was 20 to 9 years (45%), followed by 30 to 39 years (25%) and 40 to 49 years (16%).” (Lee et al.. 689). According to the proportion of the respondents surveyed, research shows that active festivals are more attractive to young people, so respondents are generally single.
“The measure for quality was developed in accordance with the context of the Mud Festival… because they significantly influence visitors’ motives for visiting the festival.” The measure includes several factors: “Festival Program (FPR), Informational Service (IS), Festival Product (FP), Convenient Facilities (CF), Natural Environment (NE), Functional Value (FV), Emotional Value (EV), Visitor Satisfaction (VS), Behavioral Intentions (BI).” Such as: “The program was funny, the pamphlets were well prepared(functional value) and the festival area has a beautiful beach… adopted for emotional value.” (Lee et al.. 691). After the collect all the data from visitors. “The explained result (Figure 2) was 60% for functional value, 61% for emotional value.” (Lee et al.. 691). They found both functional and emotional value play a significant role in the festival, but emotional value is higher than functional value. It also tests the link between the quality of the festival and the value of the festival. Values-led people to participate in the festival and event, positively affected “visitors
satisfaction levels (72% ) and behavioral intentions(69%).” The findings indicate multidimensional values can benefit “festival organizers in designing and budgeting for their festivals.” (Lee et al.. 691).
Review
The research paper is a success at achieving the authors’ main points. The “festival quality dimensions” connect with emotional and functional value, the Emotional value is more positively affect visitors “satisfaction levels” or “behavioral intention” than functional value and visitor satisfaction are strongly connected to behavioral intentions. The authors’ think both values are important but emotions are more contribute to satisfaction and behaviors of visitors. For festival organizers, they can focus more on the natural environment and spend more money on developing the event and program of the environment, thus people can better manage and design festivals.