Editorial

This issue provides an interesting variety of topics, contexts and paradigms. Sustainability features in two papers, but each paper takes a very different approach. Wang, Liang, Tsaur, Yen and Tu investigate the 2010 Taipei International Flora Exposition (a mega-event) and sustainable urban development from the perspective of local residents in Taipei, creating a 12-dimension scale of mega-event impact indicators with economic, social and environmental domains. They not only identify the indicators of mega-event impacts, but also assess the influence of these impacts on long-term urban sustainability. The study found that all positive dimensions of mega-event impact exerted significant positive effects on urban sustainability, whereas all negative dimensions exerted nonsignificant effects on urban sustainability. This is one of the first studies to examine the predictive power of event impacts on long-term urban sustainability.

Also focused on sustainability, but this time in the context of small-scale rural festivals in Northumberland, England, Black examines how such small-scale festivals can contribute to the social sustainability of a community. This paper takes a qualitative case study approach using grounded theory and finds that festivals play an important role in enabling the development of a network of connections within a community, which helps to boost social sustainability. Black also identifies that small-scale festivals need a balance of consistency and innovation, and at the same time need to provide both accessibility and openness to be successful.

On a different topic, but again taking a qualitative approach, Ross and Kwek use a social construction paradigm to explore the “schoolie” experience – an Australian annual week-long post-high school graduation event held during November and attended by tens of thousands of school students. The aim of this paper is to consider issues of identity among the attendees, and the paper highlights the importance of the unique nature of this event (usually attendees only finish high school and attend schoolies once in their life), suggesting that the event makes a significant contribution towards the newly developing self-identity of school leavers.

Mobile device use during festivals is the theme of the paper by Van Winkle, Cairns, MacKay and Halpenny. These authors aim to understand digital experiences of leisure participants, and collected data at six Canadian festivals. The paper uses the Typology of Human Capabilities (THC) as its underlying theoretical basis, and shows that each of the THC constructs of sensing, linking, organising and performing are relevant to understanding attendee use of mobile devices at festivals. Given that the numbers of attendees with mobile devices is growing, and the variety and choice of mobile applications available to event attendees is also increasing, this is an area of significant interest to event researchers and practitioners.

Kruger and Saayman present results of a survey of electronic dance music (EDM) festival attendees with the aim of identifying attendance motivations. Their analysis, carried out in the South African context, shows that EDM festival attendees can be grouped into three distinct sub-groups: enthusiasts, energisers and electros. This “3E” model contributes towards a deeper understanding of the motivations of this group of festival attendees. The paper proposes that EDM festivals may be a good source of tourism visitation for developing countries in particular, and as such, a better understanding of the drivers of attendance will be of value to event organisers.

Finally, Van Winkle and Bueddefeld investigate the process of value co-creation using service-dominant logic as a framework to understand the how value is co-created in a performing arts festival setting. The research, situated in the Canadian context, demonstrates that a range of domains all come together to create the value of the festival experience, including personal, social, cultural, physical, place and arts presentation domains. As the authors point out, this is an area where there has, to date, been little research and as a result, this paper, and future additional research will help us better understand co-creation leadership, co-creation outcomes and the co-creation process in the festival and event context.