Social impacts of music festivals: Does culture impact locals' attitude toward events in Serbia and Hungary?

Abstract

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd There is growing interest among academics in examining the impacts of festivals on host communities. This paper constitutes novel research in that it applies the Festival Social Impact Attitude Scale (FSIAS) to two large-scale music festivals of Exit (Serbia) and Sziget (Hungary). Furthermore, it explores the moderating effect of Hofstede's national cultural dimensions on residents' perception of the impacts of these festivals on their communities. The study identifies the underlying dimensions of their social impacts and reveals how the cultural dimensions of the two different nations relate to resident perception of the impacts of the festivals. The results reveal a six-factorial substructure that represents two main (positive and negative) dimensions of large-scale music festivals and suggests that national culture significantly influences local perception of festival impacts on communities. The study concludes with the theoretical and practical implications of the study and advances future lines of research.