The mediating effect of situation involvement of novelty seeking and satisfaction for Yanshuei Fireworks Festival in Taiwan

Purpose – This study aims to probe into the effect of tourists’ novelty-seeking on situation involvement and satisfaction for the Yanshuei Fireworks Festival in Taiwan. Design/methodology/approach – This study investigated 302 tourists participating in the Fireworks Festival and constructed causal relations among variables by structural equation modeling. Findings – The results suggested that when tourists’ novelty-seeking in fireworks festival is stronger, their situation involvement in the activity will be immediately enhanced. When fireworks festival participants’ situation involvement is higher, their satisfaction is also higher. Situation involvement has a complete mediating effect between novelty-seeking and satisfaction. Research limitations/implications – Because the fireworks festival only lasts for 48 hours, and the subjects must be tourists who have just experienced fireworks, it can only adopt convenience sampling instead of random sampling. However, to avoid homogeneity, in each group, this study only selected one person for the questionnaire survey. Practical implications – First, they should enhance the designed activities to create novelty; for instance, design the instruction and practice of the manufacturing of fireworks. By explanation, they enhance tourists’ learning about the display of fireworks and folk religion to satisfy participants with different degrees of novelty-seeking. Second, they can enhance the construction of situations for playfulness. For instance, upon the condition of security, the units can allow tourists to arrange fireworks independently or by group to have more fun. In addition, every year, they can display fireworks according to the Chinese Zodiac symbols to satisfy tourists’ desire of novelty-seeking and enhance their satisfaction. Originality/value – From the perspective of theoretical development, this study explores and validates the mediating effects of tourists’ situation involvement in festivals between novelty-seeking and satisfaction to fill the gap of previous research.