Festival Quality, Perceived Value, Cultural Belonging, and Loyalty Intentions in an Intangible Cultural Heritage Festival: An S-O-R Perspective

Festivals play an important role in promoting, preserving, and sustaining local cultural heritage. This study examines the relationships among festival quality, perceived value, cultural belonging, and loyalty among attendees of the Edirne Kakava-Hıdırellez Festival, using the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework. Within this scope, festival quality is treated as the stimulus, perceived value and cultural belonging as the organism, and visitor loyalty as the response. We collected data through surveys of 456 festival visitors and analyzed them using structural equation modeling (SEM). Among the festival quality dimensions, program and festival area significantly affected attendees’ perceived value. However, only the program dimension significantly affected loyalty. Cultural belonging, in turn, was significantly shaped by the information services, food and souvenirs, and festival area dimensions. The results also showed that both perceived value and cultural belonging were positively associated with visitors’ loyalty intentions. Bootstrap tests of the indirect effects showed that program quality was also indirectly related to loyalty intentions through perceived value, and festival area quality through both perceived value and cultural belonging. The findings support using the S-O-R framework to explain visitor behavior at intangible cultural heritage festivals.