The purpose of this study was to explore the factors that drive festival visitor loyalty to host destinations. Our analysis focused on the role of place attachment as a mediator of the relationship between visitors’ positive evaluation of their festival experience and their loyalty to the host destination. Using structural equation modeling, we found that satisfied visitors at a festival develop a moderate level of emotional attachment to the festival host destination and ultimately become loyal to that destination. Not all dimensions of place attachment and festival satisfaction, however, were statistically significant, nor were they of equal valence in their prediction of the destination loyalty dimensions. Based on these findings, both theoretical and practical implications of this investigation are discussed.

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Despite the growing number of studies on emotions conducted in tourism contexts, the scales measuring the phenomena have performed poorly, displaying questionable reliability and validity. Building from past work, we developed a Festival Consumption Emotions (FCE) scale capturing festival goers' emotional experiences in situ. Employing on-site and follow-up mixed mode survey procedures, data were collected from visitors to three community-based agricultural-themed festivals. We tested the psychometric properties of the FCE scale using confirmatory factor analysis and explored variation in scale performance among men and women through invariance testing. The study results demonstrated that emotions elicited during respondents' festival experience had four basic elements: love, joy, surprise, and negative. Although no differences were observed in the factorial structure of emotions by gender, the intensity of emotion expressed by men and women differed. Women scored higher than men on measures of positive emotions related to delight and lower on measures of negative emotions (i.e., unhappy and discontented). Based on these findings, we provide some insight on theory related to emotions and guidance for practice.

Despite the popularity of festivals and events across destinations, many have failed because of tight budgets and a lack of marketing knowledge. Accordingly, this study aims to assist festival organizers understand more about their target audience. The present study examined the utility of psychological commitment for segmenting festival visitors. We first profiled festival visitors based on their commitment levels and then investigated whether the segments differ in their sociodemographic characteristics, satisfaction, and loyalty. The results demonstrated the presence of three segments, each of which displayed meaningful and significant variation in the intensity of their festival commitment. The groups differed in age, education, and past experience. We also observed that the more committed visitors were to the festival, the higher their overall satisfaction was with the festival experience, and the more likely they were to exhibit loyalty intentions toward the festival. Based on these findings, practical and theoretical insights are provided.