INTRODUCTION
The relationship between festivals and tourism has a long history, but these events may have never been so popular within tourism as in recent years. Visiting a music festival has become a must-have summer program for Generation Y and Z. Events like these have significant economic, cultural, and social value for many stakeholders of the destination. Festivals can enhance the gained experience of the tourists and locals also. The overall experience can be influenced in several ways, different events and festivals can stimulate components of the experience in different degrees (Zátori 2014), and this overall experience can create a unique and memorable experience in the visitors’ mind (Morgan 2008).
There are several models to understand the dimensions of experience. Scientific articles usually deal with the effect of the dimensions on electronic word-of-mouth, post-travel behavior, loyalty and long-lasting memories. Experiences from the festivals can be shared in social media during and after the events; these provide feedbacks for the organizers and for further visitors too.Lecinski (2011) in his zero moment of truth model shows that the experience of using a product or a service (like visiting a music festival) can have a considerable influence on the feedback loop, so creating a rich experience, the one that the visitor desires, is a strategical goal of the event organizers. Generation Z has unique characteristics for travel decision-making (Dimitriou and AbouElgheit 2019) and their previous experiences, but as this generation has just recently entered the consumer markets only a few research articles deal with their behavior.
Experience economy in tourism is a widely used topic in research articles and several models can be found (see for examplePine and Gilmore 1998;Schmitt 1999;Gentile et al. 2007). The consequence of extraordinary experience is also a frequently used element in modelling (see for exampleRivera el al. 2015;Semrad and Rivera, 2018;Radder and Han 2015;Kelemen-Erdős and Mitev 2020), and can be an important factor for the feedback loop in the model byLecinski (2011). However, the feedback part of the model can only be a valuable factor for the service providers if the components of the experience are in harmony (Pine and Gilmore 1998), but only a few articles can be found in this topic (seePark et al. 2010 andÁsványi et al. 2019a).
The aim of the study is to suggest and validate a model on experience economy in the field of festivals focusing on the internal connections of experience dimensions. Although this field of research has not been the topic of many scientific articles, by understanding the internal connections, the tourism destination managers and other service providers can enrich experiences in a more efficient way. Based on the secondary research, a primary research was conducted to understand the internal connections of experience dimensions. For this quantitative research, constructs were created for experience dimensions, and PLS-SEM modeling was used to understand internal connections as part of an exploratory research about Hungarian music festivals.
1. LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 Events and music festivals in Hungary
Today's travelers are not bound by the existing infrastructure, features and attractions of a city, but rather by the experience. Events and related experiences today have a decisive influence on tourism marketing.Husz (2012) emphasizes that tourist attractions become more attractive if we associate events and experiences with them.Soldić Frleta (2018) also shows the significant change of importance and performance of cultural events and entertainment during a trip between 2014 and 2016.
Experiences can attract more visitors, and in many cases, these can involve numerous local stakeholders, so these events can have an important impact on the destination. We can see that not only residents of other cities are worthy of communicating with, but these events are also tourist programs for the locals.
Events as community programs have appeared at all stages of our history. Events and festivals provide a tourist experience not just for tourists but also for locals, so they can have a touristic feeling in their home town. The goals of these are enchasing the mood of the people, providing them experience, let them escape from their everyday life (Harsányi 2013, 300-301). To define touristic events, the most important factors are pre-organized, temporary availability, have such purpose, specific aim and place (Fazekas and Harsányi 2011). One of the most essential factors in tourism is the change of the environment that consumers are used to.Akgunduz and Coşar (2018),Morgan (2008) andGetz (2008)provides several, quite similar definitions of events in tourism. The most important factors are: these events emerge with a good idea, have cultural basis, events are carefully designed experiences where people get together and have particular duration and concept.
Festival tourism is an increasingly popular feature of event tourism. Festivals can be interpreted as a series of events (Kundi 2011). Festival tourism happens when people travel to a destination at the time of the festival to visit at least some of the events (O'Sullivan and Jackson 2002).Jászberényi et al. (2016) shows that festival tourism is connected to both tourism management and festival management. Because of the complexity, festivals “combine different cultures and genres, from which the audience and the cultural-artistic life can both win” (Hunyadi et al. 2006, 25).Hunyadi et al. (2006) also shows that there are different types of festivals, but in many cases, a festival can belong to several categories and can include numerous types of cultural-artistic events. Thus, the visitor will receive a concentrated package of various individual programs in a short period of time to maximize their utility.Jászberényi et al. (2016) describes the festivals as usually a secondary attraction of the destination because it can enhance the consumer’s perceived value, but usually the visitors choose a destination not because of the festival itself. In the case of older generations, and as well as for gastronomical, traditional and art festivals, visitors do not visit to the destination in particular because of the festival.
On the other hand, a festival - especially music festivals - for younger generations can also function as a primary attraction. This type of event encourages tourists to consume more and more, stay longer at the destination, "strengthen the attractiveness of tourist destinations."(Husz 2012, 94) According toHunyadi et al. (2006, 31) basically, if the festival was their goal for traveling, more is going to be spent on meals, tickets and other programs too.
In Hungary, the most important and most popular music festivals are Sziget Festival, VOLT, Balaton Sound, EFOTT and Strand. These names have also become trademarks of Hungarian festival tourism(MTÜ 2017). There are several literature sources which have analyzed the habits of Hungarian youngsters about their music festival attendance and can be used to define the target population of a questionnaire about music festivals in Hungary (Kovács 2009a;Kovács 2009b;Sija and Schauermann 2009,Deli-Gray 2010;Rátz 2012,Süli and Martyin 2017). The most important cultural festival is Művészetek völgye. The questionnaire of the primary research was focusing on the visitors of these festivals.
According toSija and Schauermann’s (2009) survey of 15-25-year-olds: 56% had already attended a festival during the summer. On a regular basis 22% of young people attend festivals, which means that they go to an event every summer. Based on the mentioned references, it can be summarized that 1/3 of the Hungarian audience of Sziget Festival was under 20 years old, 3 out of 10 visitors 20-24 years old, only less than 20% of the visitors are aged 29 and over. In the case of foreigners, the proportion of people over 29 is even lower (15%), although visitors less than 20 years old are under 20% also (Kovács 2009a). The majority of the Hungarian visitors come from the capital (60%) and another 13.4% from Pest County. Furthermore, almost every second visitor attends university or college (55.6% of the visitors are full-time students;Kovács 2009a).
1.2. Experience economy in tourism and festival tourism
For understanding the process of tourism, the consumer decision process proposed byKeller and Kotler (2016) and the three-part travel process (pre-, during, and post-trip, proposed by for exampleChoe et al. 2017) are merged together in this study. During pre-trip phase problem recognition, information gathering, alternative evaluation and decision happens about the destination (or the festival itself). After the decision further information gathering appears about details of the trip. During the trip further problem recognitions appear and further decision processes run. The fifth phase the post-purchase effect suggested byKeller and Kotler (2016) and its post-purchase dissonance can appear during the three phases of the travel process too.
Several articles and studies show that the customer experience has different components, but these components work together and researchers should understand experience in a holistic way of thinking in case of tourism too (Zátori 2014).
Understanding the components of experience is a research topic not just for tourism marketing but generally for a much broader field of marketing and management. For example,Pine and Gilmore (1998),Schmitt (1999) andGentile et al. (2007) also created generally usable and adaptable models for examining the dimensions of experience.
AsPine and Gilmore (1998) shows, marketers should create experiences instead of products and services, and they should provide memorable experiences to the consumers. They provide four factors of experience that should be created in different ways and can have effects on the customers in different methods. According toPine and Gilmore (1998), the richest experience can be achieved by providing great value in every four dimensions, but many journal articles demonstrate that these four realms have different significance in different cases. The optimal mixture of the four experience realms is called the sweet spot.
With more factors of experienceSchmitt (1999) emphasizes that experience is created either mentally, through senses or in the heart. He defines five strategic modules for experience: relate, sense, feel, think and act. Close toSchmitt’s (1999) model,Gentile et al. (2007) suggests six realms for experience in customer co-creation. Their general framework consists of sensorial, emotional, cognitive, pragmatic, lifestyle and relational experiences. The model ofAddis and Holbrook (2001) is also integrated into their framework, which divides customer value into two factors: utilitarian and hedonistic value. Based on this, three product types exist: utilitarian, hedonic and balanced products.
Compared toPine and Gilmore’s (1998),Schmitt’s (1999) andGentile’s et al. (2007) modelsKim et al. (2012) creates much different constructs in their quantitative research for experience in tourism: hedonism (like being excited, thrilled), novelty (like uniqueness, once in a lifetime experience), local culture (like closely experienced local culture and friendliness of the locals), refreshment (like enjoyed sense of freedom), meaningfulness (like doing something important, meaningful), involvement (like do things that were planned and wanted for a longer time) and knowledge (like understanding new cultures). AlthoughKim et al. (2012) created a model for tourism, the model ofPine and Gilmore (1998) is frequently used and adapted for cases in tourism and also sometimes extended with other factors or some factors are hidden from the model (see for exampleOh et al. 2007,Park et al. 2010,Mehmetoglu and Engen 2011,Radder and Han 2015,Rivera et al. 2015). The current study also uses the model ofPine and Gilmore (1998) as a basis for the primary research.
To understand the experience economy factors byPine and Gilmore (1998) in tourismRadder and Han (2015) describe andÁsványi et al. (2019a) shows festival examples. The originally suggested four realms of experience manifests across two dimensions. The first dimension is about the consumers’ participation in creating the experience (active or passive). For example, if the visitors of the festival listens to a concert, they are not part of the experience creation, but if they are participating in a dancing event, they become part of the creation process too. The second dimension is about connection, which has two significant extremes (absorption and immersion). In the case of absorption, the consumer is mentally involved like listening to a concert or watching a performance. On the other hand, in case of immersion the consumer is physically involved like being there at the festival site.
Research articles frequently use these realms as independent constructs or as the equally working components of an overall experience. In both ways of interpretation several articles dealing with outer connections of the elements (like with long lasting memories, loyalty, electronic Word-of-Mouth) can be found.
Manthiou et al. (2014) uses structural equation modeling and regression analysis to understand the connection between the four factors of experience and vivid memory and attendee loyalty. In case of a university festival to unite students in Iowa state, they found that esthetics play the most important role for loyalty and vivid memory too. Entertainment also has a significant effect on loyalty.
Radder and Han (2015) used the same four factors to understand the experience of a museum and to find connections between the factors and overall satisfaction, revisit intention and intention to word-of-mouth. Their factor analysis shows that in the case of the museum, entertainment and education belong to the same factor, and they use three factors in their model.
Compared to this,Rivera et al. (2015) finds that in the case of a music festival at the Caribbean’s five factors can be used to measure overall satisfaction and experience. They provide economic value as a fifth factor besides the four realms suggested byPine and Gilmore (1998). They andSemrad and Rivera (2018) also found that education was the most essential factor in the case of a small island music festival. Nevertheless, entertainment, escapism had also a really strong connection to the overall festival experience. The least important factor, esthetics still has a moderate strong connection to the overall festival experience.
Closely connected to the findings bySemrad and Rivera (2018)Kelemen-Erdős and Mitev (2020) focusing only on escapism, overall (memorable) experience and the outer connections tries to include transformation (like the visitors find their real selves) as a new construct between escapism and overall experience as a mediating variable. They show that in case of ruin bars as tourist attractions the transformation can be an important step after escapism and can have a significant influence on overall experience.
Also there can be found research articles showing that the different experience components have different effects on overall experience.Mehmetoglu and Engen (2011) found that different experiential dimensions suggested byPine and Gilmore (1998) influence the visitors' overall satisfaction in different contexts while they conducted a research on a museum and a music festival. They show that while escapism had a significant effect in the case of the music festival, in the case of the museum education had the most significant effect on overall satisfaction.
Oh et al. (2007) used a survey to understand experience economy in the case of Bed & Breakfast operators. They used correlation analysis to show connections among the four factors byPine and Gilmore (1998) and memory, overall quality, satisfaction and arousal. They find that the different factors have differently strong connections to the mentioned effects on the tourists. The most important realm was esthetics for memory, overall quality and satisfaction, and the other three realms of experience have much less effect on these factors.
Radder and Han (2015) also shows that age and connected to this the generation of the visitors can have a significant effect on the different factors of experience in tourism and for festivals. Also, based on the mentioned examples, the different types of festivals stimulate different realms of experience.
For family-friendly gastronomy festivalsÁsványi et al. (2019b) also show significant and moderately strong connections using regression analysis among the dimensions of the five 5 model suggested bySemrad and Rivera (2018) with major changes from the original statements of the constructs.
Furthermore, some research articles likePark et al. (2010) suggests that these four realms appear not beside each other, but escapism is a consequence of the three other factors. Based on this researchÁsványi et al. (2019a), using PLS-SEM modeling, found for two different gastronomy festivals that the four dimensions of experience can be based on each other. They suggest that when a visitor arrives, first they have esthetical experience, based on this education and mainly entertainment experience appears, and escapism appears following these dimensions. Esthetical experience has just a moderate direct effect on escapism, but through entertainment and education it gets more importance for escapism. According toÁsványi et al. (2019a) this means that for reaching the escapism experience the visitor should have rich educational and entertainment experiences too.
2. METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH
2.1. Research questions and hypothesis
As it was mentioned in the literature review, earlier researches suggested that dimensions of experience are based on each other and can have a significant effect on each other. As several research articles focus on the outer connections of experience dimensions and only a few articles dealing with internal connections among the dimensions can be found we decided to focus on the later one. As part of the exploratory research, we were focusing on Hungarian music festivals generally so in the questionnaire the visitors of the music festivals in 2019 had to answer questions regarding their general experiences. The outer connections (like loyalty, overall experience, long lasting memories) can rather be connected to a specific experience at specific festivals, so in our research model we did not include outer connections.
For festival tourism the 5E model ofRivera et al. (2015) was selected, which is based on the 4E model ofPine and Gilmore (1998), which is the basis of several researches in tourism about experience economy. AsÁsványi et al. (2019a) suggests, esthetics have direct impact on educational and entertainment experience, and an indirect effect on escapism. To enrich this model, economic value was included from the 5E model and it was connected to the original model as a result of the other four experience dimensions. Based on this, the suggested structural model can be seen inFigure 1.
Our research question was: Are there strong connections among the experience dimensions according to the 5E model in the case of Hungarian music festivals?
Based on the structural model, seven hypotheses were created for answering the research question:
H1: In the case of Hungarian music festivals, aesthetics has a significant direct effect on educational (H1a), entertainment (H1b) and escapism (H1c) experience.
H2: In the case of Hungarian music festivals, entertainment has a significant direct effect on escapism.
H3: In the case of Hungarian music festivals, education has a significant direct effect on escapism.
H4: In the case of Hungarian music festivals, esthetics does not have a significant direct effect on economic value. (So the visitor has to go through education, entertainment or escapism to reach economical value experience, esthetics on its own is not enough).
H5: In the case of Hungarian music festivals, education has a significant direct effect on economic value.
H6: In the case of Hungarian music festivals, entertainment has a significant direct effect on economic value.
H7: In the case of Hungarian music festivals, escapism has a significant direct effect on economic value.
2.2. Methodology
Based on the results of previous researches by the authors a questionnaire survey had been designed to collect information about the factors of experience for Generation Z regarding tourism generally, festival tourism and five specific festivals in Hungary (VOLT, Balaton Sound, EFOTT, SZIGET Festival and Strand). This structured questionnaire was part of an exploratory research for Hungarian festivals.
The target population was the members of Generation Z (only over 18 years and under 25 years) who live in Hungary and attended at least one music festival in the same year. This filter helped to collect relevant answers concerning festival experiences. Convenient and snowball sampling method was used combined to collect answers. Sampling was based on a homogeneous group, where members of Generation Z – mainly university students from Budapest and major Hungarian cities - were asked.
An online questionnaire software (Limesurvey 2.64.7) was used to collect the answers into a database. This online software provides a wide variety of question types and also has an advanced system of creating conditions. Based on the festival attendance questions, the users had to answer semantic scale questions about the overall experience and the dimensions of experience in general and for specific festivals too. Each statement was measured with a seven-point semantic scale where 1 denoted Strongly disagree and 7 denoted Strongly agree. To ensure a degree of randomness and to reduce the repetitive responses for the same experience dimension (same construct) of statements, the sequence of the items was randomized.
For measuring the dimensions of the experience, a pilot survey was conducted in September-October in 2018 in order to ensure construct validity. Based on the results some of the statements were modified. For creating the constructs of the suggested model 3-3 statements were used for the original 4E of Pine and Gilmore (1998) and for the economic value one statement was used from the final questionnaire to ensure construct reliability. The statements were based on the statements ofRivera et al. (2015) but these were highly modified. During the sampling period of time (September-October) in 2019 740 valuable answers were received, out of which 572 (effective sample size) answered that they visited at least one music festival in 2019; these answers were analyzed.
The statistical evaluation was made with IBM SPSS v26 based onSajtos and Mitev (2007) andHair et al. (2014). To test the hypotheses Partial Least Square (PLS or PLS-SEM) method was used with ADANCO 2.1.1. modeling software (Dijkstra and Henseler 2015). This method has been becoming more and more powerful and popular for marketing research over the past decade (Bakshi et al. 2019). As this quantitative research was part of an exploratory research, based on the suggestions byHair et al. (2012) andMitev et al. (2017) about the exploratory nature of the research we decided to use PLS-SEM instead of CB-SEM. Although PLS-SEM does not require the variables to have normal distribution, all of the used variables were tested for normality (seeTable 2 in the Results part).
3. RESULTS
For answering the research question the results of the PLS-SEM modeling was analyzed. The basic demographics of the sample can be seen inTable 1. Although the distribution of the age is not even because of the small range of the years for the exploratory research this distribution was accepted.
| Category | Percentage | Category | Percentage |
| Sex | Age | ||
| Male | 56.3 | 18 | 11.1 |
| Female | 43.8 | 19 | 27.0 |
| Residency | 20 | 23.8 | |
| Capital city | 48.0 | 21 | 19.6 |
| City | 15.5 | 22 | 9.1 |
| Town | 25.2 | 23 | 4.6 |
| Village | 11.3 | 24 | 2.5 |
| 25 | 2.3 | ||
Source: Authors’ own research
As in the methodology part was mentioned 13 variables were selected for creating the five constructs of the suggested model. The descriptive statistics and the results of the normality test can be found inTable 2.
Source: Authors’ own research
For ensuring the validity of the measurement model several quality criteria can be used. It is possible to test convergence validity with standardized factor loadings. These should be more than 0.5 (0.4 in exploratory research), but, ideally it is more than 0.7 (Hair et al. 2012).Table 3 shows factor loadings of each item.
| Indicator | Esthetics | Education | Entertainment | Escapism |
Economical value |
| Edu1 | 0.8338 | ||||
| Edu2 | 0.7559 | ||||
| Edu3 | 0.8477 | ||||
| Ent1 | 0.8668 | ||||
| Ent2 | 0.8920 | ||||
| Ent3 | 0.8791 | ||||
| Esc1 | 0.8579 | ||||
| Esc2 | 0.8453 | ||||
| Esc3 | 0.8796 | ||||
| Est1 | 0.8823 | ||||
| Est2 | 0.8696 | ||||
| Est3 | 0.7621 | ||||
| Eco1 | 1.0000 |
Source: Authors’ own research, made with ADANCO
Table 4 indicates Dijkstra–Henseler’s ρA values – the index of internal consistency reliability measure of constructs, which is well above the suggested cut-off value (0.7) in each case (Dijkstra and Henseler 2015). Cronbach alpha was also measured and it also should be more than 0.7. To measure convergent validity average variance extracted (AVE) was used, where values should be more than 0.5 in each construct (Hair et al. 2012). The data meet the required criteria in every case.
Source: Authors’ own research, made with ADANCO
Discriminant validity was measured byFornell and Larcker’s test (1981), where, in all cases, the AVE measure should be larger than the squared latent variable correlations of all the other constructs (all AVE values should be higher than the squared correlations in the corresponding row and column). AsTable 5 demonstrates, this requirement has been met, discriminant validity was accepted.
Source: Authors’ own research, made with ADANCO
For PLS modeling the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) is applied to measure model fit, this value should be less than 0.08 (Mitev et al. 2017). The suggested model has an appropriate model fit, because SRMR = 0.0694.
For analyzing the structural model, the results (seeTable 6 andFigure 2) demonstrate that not every hypothesis were accepted. Bootstrapping procedure was also performed to determine the significance of each connection, direct and indirect effects.
Source: Authors’ own research, made with ADANCO
AsFigure 2 presents in the case of music festival in Hungary for the younger generation (who are the most important target market for these events) esthetics have a strongly positive effect directly on entertainment (b = 0.770, p < 0.0001, H1b), and also a significant effect on educational experience (b = 0.500, p < 0.0001, H1a). The direct effect on escapism less but still positive and significant (b = 0.232, p < 0.0001, H1c). According to these results H1 can be accepted.
Entertainment has a significant direct effect on escapism (b = 0.607, p < 0.0001, H2 can be accepted), but education does not have a significant direct effect on escapism (b = 0.055, p < 0.0547, H3 should be rejected). Looking at the indirect effect (0.494) and the total effect (0.727) value of esthetics on escapism, the results show a significant indirect effect which means entertainment has an important mediating effect in this path. This can be described as visitors can reach escapism directly from esthetical experiences but it is also common that they get entertainment experiences before reaching the escapism feeling. This result suggests the same results asÁsványi et al. (2019a) mentioned: dimensions of experience have internal connections and they can be built on each other, significant sequences can be seen here.
According to H4 esthetics does not have a significant direct effect on economic value, so the users should feel other dimensions of experience too to have economic value experience too. The results show that H4 should be rejected as esthetics on its own can be enough to reach economic value (b = 0.268, p = 0.0001, H4), although it also have a significant indirect effect too on economic value (0.302, p < 0.0001). This can be interpreted like the previous results: there are a significant number of visitors who reach economical value through other dimensions of experience starting their journey from esthetics.
For the other three direct connections of economic value the results show that only entertainment has a significant connection (b = 0.363, p < 0.0001, H6 can be accepted). Escapism (b = 0.044, p = 0.497, H7 should be rejected) and education (b = -0.021, p = 0.592, H5 should be rejected) does not have a significant direct effect on economic value. Also, the indirect effect of education (0.002, p = 0.539) and entertainment (0.027, p = 0.498) through escapism is not significant on economic value.
Figure 3 shows only the significant connections of the model.
CONCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS
Based on the results detailed in the previous section, some important managerial implications can be formed. Understanding how experiences evolve in visitors of a festival is an important step for organizers and marketers. This can help to create the right order and the right mixture of experiences that can affect further behavior of the visitors. AsRivera et al. (2015),Semrad and Rivera (2018) andRadder and Han (2015) showed the overall experience has strong effects on outer connections like loyalty, memorable experiences and sharing experiences, it is also an important component to understand the dimensions of overall experience and the inner connections. This study aimed to model these inner connections with an exploratory research, that can deepen the knowledge about the visitors of a music festival.
The results of the model suggest that economical value part of experience can be reached mainly from entertainment and esthetics (directly and indirectly). For escapism the same interpretation can be mentioned: both directly and indirectly through entertainment it can be reached from esthetics. Education and escapism are not significant inputs of economic value; these three dimensions are not built on each other.
Based on the decisions about the hypotheses, a new model (Figure 2 and3) was constructed and can be suggested for using in further researches combined with other models mentioned in the literature review. Compared to the one suggested byÁsványi et al. (2019a) where escapism is the last point of the routes from esthetics in the case of gastronomy festivals, in our case – with music festivals – we could find two important end points for the routes from esthetics: economic value and escapism. Knowing this inner connection, and combined with the newly discovered mediating effect of transformation between escapism and memorable experiences (seeKelemen-Erdős and Mitev 2020) the models of outer connections can be extended. As in this study it was pointed out the exploratory research only dealt with the inner connections because the respondents were asked about their general experiences at music festivals. But in the case of a specific festival the extended inner connection model can be combined with the outer connections.
As a further research possibility we recommend to validate inner connections and possible connections to outer elements in the case of specific music festivals. This can mean also that the upcoming researches can focus on not just the on-trip phase but the post-trip phase of tourism too, as one of the limitation of the current PLS-SEM model is that it is only focusing on the on-trip phase. The limitation that that the pre-trip phase is also missing from the model can be eliminated with including constructs about pre-trip expectations and its components. AsZátori et al. (2018) andWang et al. (2020) points out the on-trip experience part of the model can also be enriched and combined with elements of creative tourism and interactivity (as part of the active involvement in thePine and Gilmore (1998) model).
Besides further researches should implement more elements of other models, there are also some other limitations of the current study. Firstly, it is limited to the Hungarian attendants of music and cultural festivals from Hungary, so the findings cannot simply be generalized to other events like gastronomy or classical music festivals. Further researches about these types of events could help to understand the difference among the different types of events and festivals. Also although convenient sampling method was an efficient way to reach the local visitors of Hungarian music festivals, it can limit the generalization too. This study focuses on generation Z (the target market of Hungarian music festivals), so further studies should pay more attention on other generations and those results should be compared to these. Also the nowadays rapidly changing environment of tourism and tourism marketing should be included in further studies.