Abstract

A wellbeing festival is an event that brings people together and celebrates a
multitude of wellbeing aspects, including physical, emotional, spiritual, and social.
Usually, festivals are designed for tourism, economic, and cultural benefits, rather than to address the needs of attendees (Getz, 1997; Raj, 2003; Güneş, 2022). Wellbeing festivals on the other hand promote components that specifically influence attendee wellbeing and have the potential to catalyse an individual’s wellbeing journey leading to wider society change. However, the wellbeing influences of UK wellbeing festival attendees are yet to be explored in academic and market research. Thus, this research aims to address this gap in knowledge by establishing whether UK wellbeing festivals influence attendee wellbeing, and if so, to what extent.
This thesis adopts an inductive and sequential approach to research utilising
qualitative methods in an exploratory order, thus adopting an interpretivist
philosophical position. There were three research design phases which incorporated multi-methods including qualitatively framed content analyses and semi-structured interviews. The qualitative content analysis addressed the first research objective, and semi-structured interviews addressed the second and third research objectives. Firstly (research objective 1), the qualitatively framed content analysis identified how wellbeing is currently positioned in UK wellbeing festivals by analysing both textual and visual content of 13 UK wellbeing festivals’ websites and Facebook Event pages. Textual and visual content was taken from 44 online files and revealed nine themes: wellbeing journey, positive emotion, nutrition, physical, spiritual, creativity, retail, flow, and social. Secondly (research objective 2), the extent to which attendees engage with different aspects of wellbeing at UK wellbeing festivals was explored through 30 semi-structured interviews with previous UK wellbeing festival attendees. Engagement themes consisted of environment, engagement attributes, feelings, community, and learning journey. Finally (research objective 3), the wellbeing influences on event attendees post festival were explored through the same 30 semi-structured interviews. Post festival wellbeing influence themes comprised of personal influence, shared influence, minimal to no influence, and reattendance and wellbeing. Intrapersonal and interpersonal wellbeing linkages were explored, as well as key theoretical relationships, specifically flow theory and social capital theory. Overall, the findings of this thesis conclude wellbeing as a multilayered
multidimensional journey for UK wellbeing festival attendees that differs between individuals. This research also demonstrates how flow and social capital
theory underpins intrapersonal and interpersonal wellbeing dimensions, specifically through strong engagements with wellbeing activities at the festivals and relationships formed within the festival communities.