The role of literary festival attendance in generating attendees' health and well-being

Abstract

PurposeThis paper examines the under-investigated well-being outcomes of literary festival attendance. It is an exploratory study into how a festival contributes to attendees' overall well-being. Drawing from the literature on well-being and festival studies, this paper seeks to understand the well-being dimensions generated by festival attendance and the factors that promote attendees' health and well-being.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory study adopts an inductive and interpretivist approach. Observations, 45 on-site interviews and 17 follow-up interviews were undertaken at one literary festival in Ireland. Thematic analysis was used to analyse data and identify key themes.FindingsThe findings reveal that attendees perceived a sense of well-being that included five interconnected dimensions: social, mental, emotional, spiritual and physical. Results also show that five factors generated attendees' overall well-being: festival programme, social environment, place, weather conditions and attendees' background.Originality/valueThis paper presents a new comprehensive model that shows that festival attendance has the potential to generate five interconnected dimensions of attendees' well-being. The model also captures the five main factors that can promote attendees' health and well-being. The model is proposed to guide further research on attendees' overall well-being is associated with festival attendance.