The Effect of Involvement and Place Attachment on Travel Motivation and Behavioral Intentions for Festival Activity

Festivals are events that can bring people joy and that involve shared planning. They involve the marketization of local traditions or cultures as well as activities to promote certain products, services, thoughts, information, and groups. Festivals can attract tourists and are the most direct and concrete channel to promote local culture to outsiders. This study researched the Xitang Hanfu Cultural Festival. Literature review and data analysis were conducted to integrate related studies and design a questionnaire using involvement, place attachment, travel motivation, and behavioral intention as the evaluation dimensions. The results were as follows: First, the proposed questionnaire was feasible and can serve as a reference for other academic institutions or industries. Second, the factor loading of most of the observed variables of each dimension exceeded 0.8. These variables had strong influences and should be considered in future studies. Third, peoples' place dependence or place identity had a positive effect on their travel motivation, and their involvement had a positive effect on their behavioral intention. Therefore, festivals should be promoted to the public when they are hosted in the future, and they should be advertised differently to different target audiences such as travelers, tourists, residents, and people interested in local culture. The results of this study can provide a reference for future studies investigating how the involvement and place attachment of tourists in festivals affected their travel motivation and behavioral intention.