Tourists ’ Satisfaction with Cultural Tourism Festival : a Case Study of Calabar Carnival Festival , Nigeria

This study investigated the relationship between tourists’ overall satisfaction and cultural festival attributes. The Calabar carnival festival was used as a case study. A Sample of 500 spectators were used for the study .Nine festivals attributes (organisation, promotion, facilities, shopping, facilitates, refreshment, food, infrastructure, environmental ambience and safety and security) were investigated out of which four showed significant relationship with overall satisfaction. Demographic variables revealed little or no dependence difference on overall satisfaction. No significance difference was found on the perception of cluster membership based on demographic variables. Only few behavioral variables show significant differences in perception of cluster member’s. The implication of findings on festival marketing was analyzed.


Introduction
Tourist destinations are developing and promoting the cultural and heritage of the people as a means of attracting and enhancing visitor experience.This is also because cultural and heritage tourism is being used as a tool to boost local economy and has the potential to aid in the seasonal and geographical spread of tourism (Long and Perdue, 1990).
Cultural tourism is described as peoples' movements for essentially cultural motivations, which include study tours, performing arts, cultural tours, travels to festivals, visits to historic sites and monuments, folk lore and pilgrimage (World Tourism Organisation, 1985).Festivals are therefore classified as a type of cultural tourism.Cross River State is an emerging tourism destination in Nigeria.It is endowed with a few cultural festivals.These include: Marina Water and sports, New Yam Festivals (hold annually in ten local government areas of the state), Wrestling Festivals (take place in seven local government areas of the state), Obudu Mountain Race ( holds once a year ), Boat Regatta (takes place in four local government areas), Ekpe Festival ( masquerade dance which is common among the Efiks and Quo people of the state ), Laboku International festival and Christmas Festival ( holds once a year).Of all these festivals, the most popular and most developed is the Cross River State Christmas Festival.The Calabar Carnival is one of the product lines offered by the Cross River State Christmas festival.Cross River State Carnival Commission (CRCC) is responsible for the planning, organising and marketing of the festival.The Cross River State Carnival Commission is established by The Cross River State Law, Number 4 of 2006 (www.visitcrossriverstate,com).The major sponsor of the cultural carnival is the State Government, with very little contribution from the private sector organizations operating in the destination.Huge amount of money is spent by government in staging the carnival.It is also Government's desire to use the event as a development catalyst of the State.This objective can only be achieved if the festival attracts viable customer groups and elicit high repeat visitations.
It is on the background of this that the researchers intend to determine the effect of festival attributes on spectators' overall satisfaction and if there are differences in tourists' perception between customer segments on the basis of demographic and behavioral characteristics.The study is guided by the following hypotheses.
H 1 : There is a significant relationship between cultural festival attributes and tourists satisfaction.
H 2a : There are differences in overall tourists' satisfaction in terms of demographic characteristics such as gender, age, educational level, personal income and nationality.

H 2b
: There are differences in overall tourists' satisfaction in terms of behavioural characteristics such as group membership, travel motive, mode of travel, number of nights spent, source of information and past experience.
The identification of tourists' characteristics and investigation of the relationship between cultural tourism festival attributes and tourists' satisfaction will help tourism practitioners, planners and marketers to have a better understanding of cultural tourism festivals which will in turn facilitate the formulation of better marketing strategies.This will enhance the destination's ability to offer visitors improved festival experience and elicit high repeat visitations.

Cultural tourism festival
There is copious evidence in literature on the benefits of cultural tourism festivals to destinations.It is reported that festivals contribute to the local regeneration and prosperity of the destination.This is because it generates new employment opportunities (Prentice and Andersen, 2003;Smith, 2004).It encourages the development of a kind of infrastructure which is visitor friendly and sustainable.Bachleitner and Zins (1992) assert that festival tourism enhances residents learning, awareness appreciation of community pride, ethnic identity, tolerance of others and brings about the opening of small and medium sized family enterprises.It is also believed that cultural events foster cross-cultural communication that can promote understanding between the host and the guest (Sdrali and Chazapi, 2007).A region can make a name for itself and establish its competitive position among country or nations through tourism (Smith, 2004).Falassi (1987, p. 2) defines cultural festival as: "a periodically recurrent, social occasion in which, through a multiplicity of forms and series of coordinated events, participate directly or indirectly and to various degree, all members of a whole community, united by ethnic, linguistic, religious, historical bonds, and sharing a world view." The community (government, community and stakeholders) have values and expectations for staging a festival.These are expressed as social reproduction.

Tourists satisfaction
Past research revealed that customer satisfaction is an important theoretical as well as practical issue.For most marketers and consumer researchers, customer satisfaction is regarded as a marketing tool to attract the most variable segments of the market.According to Kozak and Rimmimgton (2000) satisfaction is important to successful destination marketing, Philip and Hezlett (1996) recognize the fact that one of the strategic routes used by leisure firms in gaining competitive edge has been through an increase concentration in customer satisfaction.They also seem to be agreement in the fact that, customer satisfaction influence the choice of destination, the consumption of products and services and the decision to return.Customer satisfaction is increasingly becoming a corporate goal as more and more companies strive for quality in their product or service.
The phenomenology of customer satisfaction has received so much attention by both academics and practitioners in the field of marketing and psychology.The common theories underpinning the concept of customer satisfaction are: - The expectation -disconfirmation model (Oliver, 1980).
-Pivotal-core-peripheral (PCP) model (Philip and Hazlett, 1996).Bitner and Hubbert (1994) describe customer satisfaction as a feeling or an attitude of a customer towards a service after it has been used.Studies have also confirmed that there is a relationship between service quality, satisfaction and behavioral intention and then service quality and behavioural intention.As defined by Cronin and Mackey (1992:127) service quality reflects a consumer's evaluative perceptions of a service encounter at a specific point in time.In contrast, customer satisfaction judgments are experimental in nature, involving both an end-state and process, and reflecting both emotional and cognitive elements.

Cultural festival attributes
Extensive literature search revealed a large array of tourism and leisure attributes that researchers have investigated.
Early studies according to Mayo (1973) and Hunt( 1975) used generic attributes such as topography, climate, resident population, life-style, and recreational character.It is observed that following the increase in the list of attributes, factor analysis technique have been used by researchers to identity the important ones.The difference scores on domain among target markets of interest are guide to the identification of the strengths and weaknesses of a destination market position (Crompton and Love; 1995).
Andersen, Prentice and Guerin (1997) use the following attributes in their research of cultural tourism destination attributes of Demark; historical building, museum, galleries, theatres, festivals, shopping, food, places, famous peoples, castles, sports and old towns.Sofield and Li (1995) used the following attributes in their study in China; history, culture, traditional festivals, historical events, beautiful scenic heritage, historical sites, architecture, folk arts (music, dancing, craft work) and cultural village.Jodice et al (2006) used hours of operation, accessibility, cleanliness of the city, attitude of the host community, management actions, facilities (lodging, parking space) and infrastructure (road, street light and medical centres).Huh ( 2002)) used arts/craft, accessibility, accommodation, food in the study of satisfaction attributes of the Virginia Triangle.Lee, Graefe and Burns (2004) argue that satisfaction cannot be understand only in terms of the effect of service quality but suggested the inclusion of domain such as social settings, managing setting and resource setting.Teas (1993) in a similar argument posit that a customer's overall satisfaction with a transaction is function of his or her assessment of service quality, product quality and price.
There are few studies that are specifically on cultural festivals.Crompton and Love (1995) in their study of the two day Victorian Christmas Festival celebration used the following attributes; ambience of the environment, source of information on the site, comfortable amenities, parking and interaction with vendors.Anwar and Sohail ( 2004) used variety of food, well organized, peaceful and natural environment, thrilling experience, ideal beaches and immense shopping opportunities as festival attributes.A combination of these attributes makes a festival a Total Touristic product (TTP).

Difference in visitor satisfaction based on demographic and behavioural characteristics
A search of relevant literature shows that extensive studies have been done by tourism and recreation experts to establish the dependence of satisfaction on demographic and behvioural characteristics.Valle et al (2006) found no significant dependence between cluster members and demographic variables (gender, occupation, marital status and type of lodging), but found educational level, nationality and age significantly dependent.Jodice et al (2006) observed that no significant variations was found among segments in terms of respondents demographic profile except personal income.Huh (2002) observes significant relationship between overall tourists satisfaction and gender only.There was no significance difference with age, state of origin, educational level, and total household income.In terms of behavioural characteristics, Huh (2002) found significance dependence between overall satisfaction and tourists' past experience.
No significant difference was found with length of stay, membership of group and distance to destination.Martin, Bridges and Grunwell (2006) found that gender, age and income distribution in the sample are significantly different between years of event based on Chi-square test.On behavioural characteristic, there was significant dependence in terms of accommodation type and spending.Valle et al (2006) had also reported significant variation in the cluster membership on the bases of length of stay in destination and mode of transportation.Overview of prior literature on the effect of demographic and behavioural characteristics on tourists' perception and satisfaction with cultural tourism festival and to a large extent cultural /heritage destination shows that, there is no consensus as to the role these factors play in determining tourist satisfaction.However majority of the studies support the suggestion that socio-demographic variables of tourists are poor segmentation bases given the fact that, the leisure preference transcend beyond the individual.

The study site
The Calabar has rich cultural expressions such as masquerades (Ekpo, Nnabo, etc.), traditional dances (Ekombi, Monikim, etc.) and cuisines (Ekpang Nkukwo, Edikan Ikong, Afia Efere, etc.).Bayside Band: The Band's theme is centred around the origin of man, nature, values and attributes of the culture and heritage of the people.

The first edition of
Freedom Band: The Band's theme is centred on man's freedom in its entire facet.The Exodus of Israelites, freedom from colonialism, freedom from slavery, democratic freedom and the fundamental human rights Master Blaster Band: The Band's theme is centred on the promotion of man's sociability irrespective of race, religion and nationality.
Passion 4 Band: The band centres its theme on Genesis showing the beginning of things and creation of man and his splendor.It decries the destructive forces in nature as always over-riding the constructive ones.The band advocates that man's natural environment be given adequate protection to save it from total destruction.
Seagull Band: The theme of the band is "proudly African".
The 2007 Calabar festival was held in two days.The 26th and 27th of December 2007.The 26th was the children festival and cultural displays from all parts of the state.The 'Efiks' call it Mbra-mbra.It is a collection of colourful and titillating cultural dances and masquerades.The 27th was the main carnival float that involved the five bands.This impact study is limited to the main event that held on the 27th December, 2007.

Research design
The Cross sectional survey design was used in collecting data.This is because the study was intended to capture a snapshot of the service perception and event attributes of attendees during the event.

Target population
The population consists of all spectators to the event who are 20 years and above and who were found at the carnival route acting as consumers of the event.The carnival route starts from the U.J Esuene stadium, through Mary Slessor, Marian Road, and Murtala Mohammed Highway and back to the stadium.All those found watching the carnival float along the route were conceptualised as consumers of the event or spectators.The spectators were divided into three types; overnight spectators and resident spectators and day tripper spectators.The target population therefore consists of overnighters, day trippers and resident spectators.Overnight spectators are those who spent at least one night at the destination for the purpose of this event.The day tripper spectators are those who did not stay in the destination for a night.The resident spectators are those who came from their homes to watch the event.The residents were included because of the propensity to spend more than if they had just a routine day.

Sample selection
The Convenience sampling method was used.This method of sampling enables the researcher to get a gross estimate of the results without incurring the cost or time required to select a random sample.
The research was conducted using 500 spectators' survey questionnaires administered during face-to-face interviews.This method potentially offers the best response rate because it allows development of rapport between the interviewer and the respondent.The error rate decreases because it provides an opportunity for clarification of questions where doubts exist.Furthermore, the interviewer can probe for answers from the respondent; an immediate checking of the questionnaire on the internal consistency of responses and additional information could be included through observation by the interviewer or through extra comment by the respondent.The method also resolves the issue of missing data since the interviewer collects the data as he or she administers the questionnaire.

Research instruments and methods
The two major sources of data were the secondary and primary data sources.Secondary data sources provided data that have been collected, analysed and discussed by previous scholars in the field.Hence, secondary data helps to contextualise current research in the field.A semi structured written questionnaire was used to elicit primary data.The first part of the questionnaire focuses on the identification of the event consumers and their trip characteristics.The second part deals with their spending pattern.The third section focuses on respondents' attitudes and perceptions of the planning and management of the event.The fourth section deals with the demographic variables of the respondents and included items such as their age, income per month, gender and educational qualifications.

Variables measurement
The development of measurement instrument and identification of variables was guided by extensive literature review.
The researchers also took into consideration, the fact that tourists' satisfaction cannot be understood only in terms of the effect of service quality and the suggestion that social setting, managing setting and resource setting should be included in the list of attributes (Lee, Graefe and Burns, 2004).To this extent nine festival attributes were identified and used for this study.They include: event organization, friendliness of locals, and availability of refreshment and food, information about event (promotion), facilities, infrastructure, safety and security, ambience of the environment and shopping were selected.
A questionnaire similar to that of huh ( 2002) and Jodice et al (2006) was used to measure tourists' overall satisfaction, tourists' perception of cultural festival tourism attributes, demographic and behavioural characteristic.Overall tourists' satisfaction was measured on a five -point Likert scale with "1"as not very satisfied and "5" as very satisfied.
Perception of the cultural festivals attributes was measured on a "5" point Likert scales with "1" as strongly disagreed and "5" as strongly agreed.The following factors were used to measured tourists demographic profile: gender, educational level, personal income, age and nationality.The following were used to measured tourists' behavioural characteristics: group membership, length of stay, past experience, source of in information, mode of travel and travel motive.
Tourist overall satisfaction was used as the dependents variable.The festivals tourism attributes were used as the independent variable .The demographic and behavioral characteristic were used as control variables ( Huh, 2002).

Procedure in administrating questionnaire
In all, there were twenty field staff; six investigators and fourteen trained research assistants.The field staffs were given twenty five copies of the questionnaire each.They were assigned to designated points along the Carnival route.The questionnaires were administered by intercepting and interviewing spectators at such points.

The validity of the instrument
The content validity was obtained by getting experts in cultural tourism to scrutinise the instrument.Also, twenty final year students of the Department of Marketing in the University of Calabar were used to pretest the questionnaire.Observations made were noted and corrected.These students were later used as research assistants in collating data for this study.The content validity was strengthened through an extensive literature search.The reliability of instrument was measured using Cronbach's Reliability Test.The correlation was .70.This value means there is high scale measurement reliability.

Data analysis
First, the invalid copies of questionnaire were removed and discarded.Out of the 500 copies of questionnaire administered, 416 were properly filled and returned by research assistants.Data analysis was done by the use of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS).Percentage, frequency was used for tourists' demographic and behavioural characteristics.Descriptive statistics was used to compute the mean perception of cultural festival attributes and overall attendees'' satisfaction.Factor analysis was done to produce a correlated variable composite from the original nine attributes and to produce a small set of dimensions or factors that would help to explain most of the variances between the attributes.To determine the relationship between cultural festival attributes and attendees' satisfaction, the factor scores were regressed with attendees' overall satisfaction (Hair, Bush and Ortinau, 2006).
The model specification is as follows:

Descriptive statistics
The sample has more males than female attendees (male, 72.84%; female, 27.17%).85.2% were domestic attendees, while 14.9% were international attendees.Out of the 62 foreigners in the sample; majority came from other African countries (33.9%),North America (22.6%) and Europe (19.4%).The age distribution shows that majority of the attendees were in the age range of 40-49 (39.8%).This was followed by those in the age range 50-59 (21.8%).The data shows that majority of the respondents in the sample were professionals followed by business persons (18.7%) and civil servants (15%).The income distribution shows that majority of the respondents indicated that they earned more than N100, 000 per month (24.9%).Majority of the attendees were educated.Those who hold higher degrees were 39.1% and 33.1% for those with first degree.
Majority of the respondents said they were very satisfied (38%), 25%, were satisfied, while 19% said they were very dissatisfied (see Figure 1).The mean perception for each of nine festival attributes was above average.Promotion had the highest means rating (4.35), while infrastructure had the lowest mean rating (2.56) (Table 2) The Principal Component Analysis used to generate five domains.Only factors with Eigenvalues greater than or equal to one and attributes with factor loading greater than 40 was considered.The five domains were named as follows; factor 1-event organization and marketing, factor 2-facilities and gastronomic, factor 3-security, factor 4-shopping, factor 5-relationship (see Table 3).

Inferential statistics
H1: There is a relationship between cultural festival tourism attribute and overall tourists' satisfaction.
The result of the regression analysis shows that there is a significant relationship between festival satisfaction and festival attributes (R2= 0.196 p< 0.00).Out of the nine festival attributes, four attributes partially supported hypotheses one (promotion, t= 2.557, p= 0.000; organization, t=-3.782 p<0.05; facilities, t= 2.059, p < 0.05; friendly locals, t=1.697,P<0.10).The others did not show significant relationship with tourists' satisfaction (Table 4).
H2a: There are differences in overall tourists' satisfaction in terms of demographic characteristics such as gender, age, educational level, personal income and nationality.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) result shows that gender, age, educational level, nationality employment status did not lead to significant difference in overall tourists' satisfaction.Personal income was however found to be significant (t=, p<0.05) as shown in Table 7.
H2b.There are differences in overall tourists' satisfaction in terms of behavioral characteristics such as group membership, travel motive, mode of travel, accommodation type, nights spent, source of information and past experience.
The result of ANOVA revealed that there is no significant difference in overall satisfaction in terms of the behavioral characteristics under investigation at 10 per cent (P > 0.10) significant level.
It was found that tourists differ in their decision to revisit event on the basis of the customer segment they belong to.Majority of the respondents (78%) indicated that they would repeat visit to the destination for the event.

Discussion of findings
The study shows that cultural tourism festival attributes have significant effect on overall tourists' satisfaction.This is partly supported by the result of the multiple regression analysis.The result of multiple regression analysis revealed some festival attributes (organisation, promotion, facilities and friendliness of locals) are predictors of the level of attendees' overall satisfaction with the festival.These attributes could be packaged and manipulated by way of strategy formulation to increase the level of satisfaction of attendees to the event.There is the tendency of consumers responding positively when exposed to the right cues.The basic theoretical underpinning is that the festival attributes that are explanatory of attendees' satisfaction should be factored into the product development and marketing strategy.
The fact that demographic variables investigated in this study did not show significant difference in attendees' satisfaction shows that they are not explanatory factors of tourists' satisfaction with cultural festivals.This is because the distribution does not differ between cluster membership and therefore poor segmentation bases.This finding is in support of some of the existing studies (Valle et al, 2006).Personal income which is an important bases of one's social class was however significant and therefore could be used for segmenting the festival market and targeting.
The finding of this study reveals that there is no relationship between the five behavioural variables and attendees' overall satisfaction.This contradicts the position of existing literature on the subject.In Jodice et al (2006), past experience of tourist shows significant difference.The study by Valle et al (2006) found that group membership was significantly different in the two clusters.The specific behavioural variables that show significant dependence could be use as the basis of segmentation of the cultural tourism festival market.The marketing implication of this finding is that, behavioural variable are not good segmentation bases for cultural festivals.According to Huh (2002), respondents with previous experience were more satisfied than the respondents without previous experience.With a repeat visit of 78% of the respondents, the Calabar Carnival festival should develop competitive strategies that will ensure its attractiveness and viability as a developmental tool of the destination.Festival marketers should target repeat visitors with promotional strategies such as direct mails.During event, the event organizers should identify some of the "big time visitors", especially corporate sponsored visitors.A database of event customers should be developed to facilitate communication with such special accounts.The event organizers should send information concerning the festival, destination, and new products offered by the Destination Management Organistion (DMO) to the festival customers.This will establish long-term relationship with repeat visitors and attract potential visitors to the festival which is the major source of information for the event.
These findings would help event planners and marketers specially the DMOs and the festival organisers in formulating strategies that will enhance visitor satisfaction and the competitiveness of the festival.They can do so by focusing more on the provision of facilities (parking spaces, construction of viewing points with seat-outs), effective promotion of event locally and internationally taking into consideration the income status and behavioural characteristics of festival customers.The organization should review the timing of event, the band sizes and the cultural content of the bands.

Conclusion
Festivals generally have become a quick to use means of promoting tourist destinations.There are arrays of attributes that affect tourists' overall satisfaction with festival.In this study four festival attributes were found to be explanatory of the level of satisfaction (event organisation, promotion, facilities, and friendly locals).When these variables are factored into the development and marketing of festivals, it would go along way in improving the tourists' satisfaction of event attendees.For the Calabar festival, those who are in cluster one require superior performance in the explanatory variables to experience increase satisfaction.Since behavioral characteristics are better segmentation variables than the demographic variables, festivals promotion could be made more effective and enhanced if attendees' behavioral characteristics are taken into consideration.In all the bottom-line is to delight the visitors and elicit a profitable repeat visit to the destination for the same event or other activities.
Calabar Carnival Festival was held in 2005.Five bands were registered for participation in the carnival.The bands included; (I) Bayside band, (ii) Freedom Band (iii) Master Blaster Band (iv) Passion 4 Band (v) Seagull Band.Each band has unique features and concept.The membership of the Bands is open to all Nigerians and Non-Nigerians alike.At the end of the carnival the Bands are ranked and rewarded according to their performances by the Government.The themes of the bands are shown below:

Table 2 .
Mean perception of festival attributes

Table 3 .
Factor analysis results of attendees' perception of cultural festival attributes (N=416)

Table 4 .
Relationship between domains of cultural festival attributes and satisfaction *R 2 = .196,p=.000

Table 5 : ANOVA showing the effect of demographic factors on attendees overallsatisfaction
R Squared = .140(Adjusted R Squared = .055)a.