Applying Miryoku (Attractiveness) Engineering for Evaluation of Festival Industry

The main purpose of this study focuses on evaluating festival goers’ perception of attractiveness in the festival industry. The Taiwan Lantern Festival was selected as the representative case, with the goal of characterizing attractiveness attributes as perceived by regular festival attenders. First, 16 participants were interviewed with the Evaluation Grid Method (EGM) to establish the attractiveness factors of three phases, designated “ladder up abstract feelings,” “middle original reasons” and “ladder down concrete objects.” Furthermore, 500 questionnaires designed to survey attractiveness factors were distributed at the activity spot, of which 267 were completed by repeated festival attenders. By Quantification Theory Type I analysis, this study found the top five attractiveness factors for each phase respectively, which are (A) Original reasons: 1) the atmosphere of the lantern festival 2) nice, creative work of the lanterns 3) great firework shows 4) local side dishes 5) live band; (B) Abstract feelings: 1) romantic 2) magnificent 3) special 4) original 5) experiencing the scene ambiance; (C) Concrete objects: 1) stream of light 2) different images from each exhibition 3) characteristic design of the fireworks 4) being able to taste local representative products 5) live band show on the hour. The attractiveness extraction and evaluation method of this research could provide a resource for festival industry managers, planners, evaluators and peripheral festival product designers.