Conceptualising the Impact of Festival and Event Attendance upon Family Quality of Life (QOL)

Abstract

Quality of Life (QOL) research has been quite well explored in medicine, psychology and the social sciences although it has received very little attention within festival and event studies. This proposition paper is both conceptual and exploratory and will seek to establish the foundations of a framework to investigate the impact(s) festivals and events may have upon individual and family QOL and to set a research agenda for research into QOL in the field of festival and event studies. The paper begins with a review of literature which sets the conceptual nature of the article in the area of festival studies and in doing so investigates interconnected themes such as; political, social, cultural, and personal impact discourses. Following this our paper provides a review of literature introducing key QOL theories, concepts and research undertaken in previous studies. The paper then progresses naturally into a discussion of the key differences and relationships between individual and family QOL; and provides an overview of previous research in festivals and events to allow the study to develop research questions in order to situate this paper and our future research agenda. Following the literature review we present a discussion of key methodological considerations in order to determine the most appropriate and practical framework for collecting and analysing primary data to better understand the potential impacts of festivals and events on families QOL. The final section of the paper concludes and reflects upon our review of literature and research questions which we hope will set an agenda for future research in this area and on the development of a framework to test QOL within events.