Predicting behavioural intentions of Craft Beer Festival attendees by their event experience

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the event experience literature by examining the effects of Craft Beer Festival attendee’s event experience on their satisfaction and behavioural intentions. The study also investigates whether these relationships are moderated by the attendee’s past history with the festival and the distance they have travelled to attend the event. Design/methodology/approach: The theoretically derived model was tested on a sample of 354 attendees of the Capital Craft Beer Festival in Pretoria, South Africa. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. Findings: The results indicated that only affective engagement positively influences attendee’s satisfaction, which, in turn, positively influences attendee’s intentions to revisit and recommend the beer festival. The authors found no evidence of the effects of cognitive and physical engagement and experiencing novelty on event satisfaction and no moderating effect of previous attendance and distance travelled to the event. Originality/value: The findings advance the knowledge base in the field of a gastronomic event experience regarding critical factors that affect event satisfaction which, to date, have only been tested on sports events.