THE MECHANISM OF LINKAGES BETWEEN ONLINE COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION AND FESTIVAL ATTENDANCE – A CASE STUDY OF A CHINESE MUSIC FESTIVAL
Online social network participation, and its impacts on festival attendees’ motivation, have been investigated in previous studies. However, the results have been inconclusive. Social network participation motives have also been researched but have mostly been limited to Facebook and other social media from the West. Social media participation motives in the East, for example in China, and its causes and effects on music festival attendance have remained underexplored. This study adopted a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews and netnography to empirically examine the connection between online social network participation and music festival attendance. Data collection included using netnography to explore a music festival social network chat group (online community) and then conducting in-depth interviews with festival attendees who were active members of the online community. The study sheds new light on festival attendees’ motives for online social network participation, a plausible mechanism and model to explain how an online music festival community sustains and connects its old and new members.