Do locals attend Riverside Rock to create a sense of community, or do other motives influence attendance?

Abstract

This research project investigates the motivations behind the attendees of Riverside Rock in the Scottish Borders and explores if creating a sense of community plays any part in spectator attendance. The first section of the project looks at already existing literature with regards to motivations for attending events and festivals and then moves onto does creating a sense of community motivate attendees. With regards to creating a sense of community by attending event, the literature is limited, and in terms of attendees of Riverside Rock it does not exist. This is why the objectives of this study are to first, evaluate what motivates the attendees to actually go along to Riverside Rock. Secondly, understand how much creating a sense of community motivates them and finally, find out why the music festival was created and was it to benefit the community. To find this information out a mixed methods approach was selected. An online questionnaire was created for attendees of Riverside Rock to determine motivations, followed by an interview with one of the creators of the event to collect unknown information about the event. The questionnaire participants were slightly mixed but mainly female, between the ages of 18-28, and identified as residents of Jedburgh. The main motivations that were found were socialisation and the music at the event. In the end section the main conclusions of the study can be found, the main conclusions of the study focus on whether the aim and 3 objectives were met. Motivations for attending Riverside Rock are stated and creating a sense of community is not a main motivator, but attendees do think the festival creates a sense of community and the creators clarify creating benefits for the community was took into consideration when planning the festival. Conclusions are followed on by recommendations for any future research and for the organisers of Riverside Rock, the main recommendation is including socialisation into Riverside Rock to benefit the attendees as it was voted the main motivation. The main recommendation for any future research was gathering a larger sample size for the quantitative research as it can make the study more generalisable for the whole population. Key Words: Motivations, Events, Festivals, Community Events.