THE IMPACT OF CULTURAL FESTIVALS ON SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING OF THE VISITORS: CASE STUDY OF ALVA'S VIRASAT, A NATIONAL CULTURAL FESTIVAL IN INDIA

This research examined the relationship between cultural festival experience and subjective well-being among festival attendees. In this connection, this study captured the perceptions of 192 festival attendees' attending the cultural festival of "Virasat" in India on the four subdimensions of festival experiences (i.e., music experience, festival atmosphere, social experience, separation experience) and subjective well-being. Accordingly, this study adopted structural equation modeling (SEM) and hierarchical regression analysis to examine the relationship between the study constructs. Results that emerge from this study point towards the presence of a significant positive relationship between cultural festival experience and subjective well-being. Furthermore, of the four dimensions of festival experience, music experience and separation experience, in that order, were found to be the most potent predictors of subjective well-being. Social experience and festival atmosphere only minimally augmented predictability of subjective well-being over and above music experience and separation experience. Accordingly, the findings of this study are expected to aid cultural festival organizers to design events that elicit exhilarating festival experiences that, in its turn, is expected to augment subjective well-being among event attendees. Drawing extensively from subjective well-being research in India that suggests factors like sociodemographics, personal characteristics, economic conditions, and purchasing power parity contribute only moderately, if not significantly, to the levels of subjective well-being among the residents in India, the findings of this study situates cultural festival experience as a possible trigger that augments subjective well-being among Indians in a collectivist cultural context.