Identidade Social, Mindfulness e Place attachment como drivers da Experiência Turística Memorável e seus consequentes: um estudo no Festival Cultura e Gastronomia Tiradentes

Abstract

The present doctoral thesis sought to understand the relationships between the motivators of a memorable tourist experience at a nationally known Festival and its consequences. The investigated festival was the Tiradentes Culture and Gastronomy Festival, considered the largest gastronomic festival in Brazil. For the theoretical basis and attainment of the research objective, the topics covered were tourism and consumer, memorable tourism experience, hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being, behavioral intention, festival attachment and place attachment, mindfulness, motivations and Social identity theory. The methodology used was of the quali-quanti type. The first, qualitative, investigated what consumers mean by festival and gastronomic festival, enabling a Brazilian definition for both concepts. Furthermore, it identified the main elements that characterize gastronomic festivals and festivals, the main motivations for participation in these and whether there are intentions for post-participation behavioral changes. This stage was developed by means of focus groups, totaling 22, carried out at the Federal University of Minas Gerais and 16 in-depth interviews carried out in 2017 in the twentieth edition of the event. The exposed allowed the construction of a scale for measuring motivators and consequent of a memorable tourist experience in festival, with some new constructs and others adapted. The unprecedented constructs can thus be considered as they are totally focused on the studied reality and emerged from the qualitative stage, namely: 1) motivations construct, composed of: personal, professional, social motivation and excellence of the festival; 2) eudaimonic well-being construct. With the making of the scale, the quantitative methodology was used to verify the validity and reliability of each construct and, subsequently, to evaluate the structural relationships between the constructs of the model. Data collection was carried out on the spot, through a face-to-face survey in 2018, in the twenty-first edition of the festival, obtaining a total of 734 questionnaires, 653 of which are valid. The entire course of the thesis made it possible to understand the relationships between the motivators of a memorable tourist experience at the largest gastronomy festival in Brazil and its consequences. With the assessment of structural relationships between the model's constructs, the hypotheses of the work can be supported: H1: Memorable Tourist Experience positively impacts well-being; H2: Memorable Tourist Experience positively impacts behavioral intention; H3: Memorable Tourist Experience positively impacts festival attachment; H4: Motivations positively impact MTE; H5: Social identification positively impacts Memorable Experience; H6: Place attachment positively impacts Memorable Experience; and H7: Mindfulness positively impacts Memorable Experience. Only hypothesis H4.2 (Professional motivation positively impacts MTE) was rejected. The main findings indicate that the strand of SIT called social identity is sufficient to influence MTE. Regarding the latter, the research pointed out that the items culture, friendships, local receptivity and novelty proved to be sufficient to represent it in this context. The work contributes to greater theoretical robustness, especially with regard to topics that are still little explored in the context of festivals such as SIT, mindfulness, eudaimonic well-being and topics that have growing interest such as hedonic well-being, festival attachment and place attachment. In addition to expanding the field of study, the thesis enables managers to better understand this market with a view to competitiveness