Expenditure at Festivals: Systematic Literature Review and New Lines of Research

Abstract

Over the last few years, festivals have been growing and adapting to the cultural diversity evident in a globalized world. More recently, researchers have been paying attention to the expenditure generated by these events and their implications for tourism. The aim of this article is to analyze the state of the art about expenditure at festivals, identify current scientific production and understand/explore the different approaches used. The originality of this study lies in its being the first systematic review of the literature on this subject. To achieve this objective, searches were carried out in two scientific databases, SCOPUS and Web of Science, and a total of 279 published documents were obtained, which after filtering, resulted in fifty-four articles that were considered relevant to this study. The main results were that most of the studies were carried out in the United States and South Africa on different types of cultural festivals. Accommodation, food and drink and transportation are the most studied expenditure components. Sociodemographic characteristics, such as age and income, are also the factors that most influence participants' spending. The article ends with a conclusion of all the results obtained and suggests avenues for future research.