Today when the local self governing system has been settled, local festivals are playing an important role for activating local tourism. The importance of local festivals is increasing steadily as local self governing bodies regard local festivals as ...
Today when the local self governing system has been settled, local festivals are playing an important role for activating local tourism. The importance of local festivals is increasing steadily as local self governing bodies regard local festivals as a crucial means for restoring the identity of their community, achieving unity among the local residents, and promoting local economy.
Although this trend has contributed to the quantitative increase in local festivals, however, the qualitative success of local festivals is still questionable. Even some local festivals try to imitate successful festivals in other areas in order to catch up with their quantitative growth, failing to carry the fundamental values of local festivals.
Most of local governments recognize the weight and importance of stakeholders in community for the adequate implementation of the values of local festivals, but they have restricted or excluded major stakeholders’ activities in the process of festival and this has aggravated confrontation and conflict among stakeholders.
There are various stakeholders involved in a local festival and even their existence itself raises potential for conflict. In general, conflict is viewed negatively as an obstacle to the performance of festival, but it has a positive aspect in that it provides opportunities for the harmony of interests and further development through conflict management.
Accordingly, in order for a local festival to find its true values and to be successful it is an important task to manage conflicts among the stakeholders and this raises the necessity of research on how conflict management can enhance festival performance.
The objective of this study was to suggest implications for the development of local festivals through reviewing theories on the process of local festival and involved stakeholders, conflict management, and festival performance, and to examine the effects of conflict management on festival performance and difference in the perception of conflict management and festival performance according to stakeholder and festival type.
The objects of empirical analysis in this study were the Geumsan Insam Festival, the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival, the Ganggyeong Fermented Seafood Festival, and the Muju Firefly Festival, which were selected as the most excellent or excellent festivals by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2010. A total of 344 questionnaires were used in the empirical analysis, and the hypotheses and the model were tested through frequency analysis, reliability test, factor analysis, multiple regression analysis, one way ANOVA and t-test.
In the results of analyzing the effect of stakeholder conflict management on the process of local festival, the cause of conflict affected the level of conflict, which in turn affected the conflict management method, which again affected festival performance. In this way, conflict in local festival was found to be a procedural concept starting from the cause of conflict and leading to the level of conflict, conflict management method, and festival performance.
In the results of analyzing difference according to stakeholder and festival type, the level of conflict was highest between the local government and local civil organizations among stakeholders. In addition, according to festival type, compared to local special product festivals, natural environment festivals adopted cooperation as a conflict management method and achieved cooperation among the stakeholders more efficiently.
Dividing the outcomes of this study into the results of theoretical review and the results of empirical analysis, we suggested their implications as follows.
Through theoretical review, first, we defined the conflict management process from many previous studies and derived variables related to the process such as the cause of conflict, the level of conflict, and conflict management method for making research on local festivals.
Second, we divided festival performance suggested various ways in previous studies into economic, social-cultural and tourist performance, and made a partial contribution to the theoretical definition of festival performance.
Through empirical analysis, we derived not only the importance of conflict management in local festivals but also problems in current local festivals.
First, we proved the effect relation between conflict management and festival performance, and examined the causes of conflict and the level of conflict. Even if a local festival had attained performance, it still contained the causes of conflict and the actual level of conflict was not low. Accordingly, although it may be impossible to resolve conflicts among stakeholders completely in local festivals, we may raise festival performance and attain desirable festival operation through narrowing the gap among the stakeholders.
Second, we found that there were conflicts among local festival stakeholders, and major conflicting stakeholders were the local government and local civil organizations. Festival performance should require the local residents’ voluntary participation and make a contribution to local economy. In order to enhance festival performance and to minimize conflict between the two groups, the local government needs to understand local civil organizations’ demands or sentiments and to induce their active and voluntary participation.
Third, the conflict management method was closely associated with festival performance and compromise was suggested as an ideal means, but cooperation had a negative effect on festival performance. This shows lack of cooperative networks among local festival stakeholders. Cooperation among stakeholders can be achieved based on equal relationship among local civil organizations and other involved groups rather than through the local government’s one sided demand. The maintenance of voluntary cooperative partnership and network among stakeholders will be a crucial requirement for high festival performance.
This study has limitations, however, in that it, as a cross sectional study, could not overcome the time restriction although stakeholder conflict management is a dynamic phenomenon, that the sample did not include a variety of stakeholders, that it did not approach by diverse research methods including in depth interview, and that further discussion is necessary on adequacy as a theory fit for the current situation of local festivals. Despite these limitations, however, this study is the first attempt to analyze association between conflict management and festival performance in local festivals, and in this sense, it is expected to provide useful information on conflict management in local festivals.