This study investigated who a primary decision maker or actual performer is in the process of festival participation. The process of participation in a local festival can be divided into five stages: decision making stage of before departure to the fe...
This study investigated who a primary decision maker or actual performer is in the process of festival participation. The process of participation in a local festival can be divided into five stages: decision making stage of before departure to the festival venue, in the middle of trip to the festival place, at the festival place, during coming back home from the festival, and after arrival at home. Moreover, type of family was considered an important component in this study in explaining the role of a primary decision maker or actual performer. Thus, the family type was categorized by a group of family with children and a group of family without children.
Data for this study were collected through an on-site self-administered survey process. The sample used for this study consisted of festival goers who participated in the '2005 Gyenongju Korean Traditional Drink & Rice Cake Festival' with or without children. Questionnaires were distributed over the entire festival period of March 26 through 31, 2005. A total of 700 questionnaires were distributed to the participants in the festival during the festival period, and a total of 548 usable responses were collected for further data analysis steps. A total of 152 unusable questionnaires were ruled out because incomplete questionnaires.
Descriptive statistics of frequency analysis showed the general questions of both families with and without children. A repeated measure of the general linear model (GLM) was selected to analyze differences of responses of decision makers or performers.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, the husbands of family with children played a role as a decision maker regarding the judgment about time; for example, departure time from home, break time, leaving time from the destination, and arriving time. Also, results of the study revealed that the husbands from family with children
showed a higher level of involvement with decision of types of accommodation.
Second, wives of family with children were involved in budgeting- and planning-related decision making.
Lastly, the results of differences in both cases of family with and without children were found. Husbands showed a tendency of being involved with car maintenance and payment for gasoline bill at the gas station. Wives indicated a high level of roles in suggestion to attend certain festivals, and they are also committed to decision related to meals. Furthermore, wives showed the buying power on souvenir-related purchasing, Thus, they indicated an influence of what to buy or not to buy and what limitation to buy. Wives revealed progressively enjoying the festival itself and they engage into finalizing the journey.
The contribution of this study was to explore an influential decision making in the festival participation. The study aims to find out who plays more in part out roles during the family festival participation process and thus the process was divided into the five stages and family types were considered. The other contribution would be to make an endeavor that exercised twice preliminary examinations and a pre-test to increase reliability and validity of questionnaire items.
One of weaknesses of this study was the fact that festival participants were not drawn from various types of festivals, The results of this study may not be generalized in other cases. Thus, more efforts should be made in considering children's age level. It means that future study should consider a role of children in festival participation decision making process. Although this kind of treatment has made in the family lifestyle research, this study did not cover this area. This study conducted on-site, and so there could be obstacles to answer questions that were related to during coming back from the venue and after arriving home from the festival. A future study should consider these matters to overcome possible problems.