The Predictive Validity of Alternative Approaches to Evaluating Quality of a Festival

Alternative conceptualizations of the quality and satisfaction constructs are presented from both the leisure/tourism and the marketing literatures, and differences between them are noted. The predictive validity of seven alternative operationalizations of quality that were suggested by the literature were measured by evaluating them against an overall measure of quality in the context of a festival. Results showed that the most valid measures of quality were the performance-based operationalizations; the least valid were the disconfirmation-based operationalizations; and the inclusion of importance weights did not improve predictive validity of the measures. There was no significant difference between first-time and frequent visitors to the festival on any of the seven alternative operationalizations. Implications of the findings are discussed.