Although festivals and events have been identified as a growth segment within tourism, smaller cultural festivals have received much less attention. These smaller cultural festivals aim to bring cultural contributions and increased well-being to attendees and the host community in addition to their economic value. More specifically, queer film festivals have increased in number and size within the last decade and have an important history and purpose within the LGBT2Q+ community. As such, the current study investigated the attendees of the 2019 & 2020 Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF), Western Canada’s largest queer film festival. The survey instrument asked attendees questions about subjective well-being, cultural/educational impacts, community benefits, future programming, and demographics. Preliminary results comparing demographic, behavioural, perceived benefit, and outcome characteristics between the 2019 in-person version and the 2020 virtual pandemic version of VQFF are discussed. Industry and academic implications and areas for future study are also considered

Bachman, Jarrett R

Hull, John S

English

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst TTRA Canada 2021 Conference TTRA Canada 2021 Understanding the Impacts of Festivals on Resident Attendees Before and During COVID-19: A First Look at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival Jarrett R. Bachman Fairleigh Dickinson University - Vancouver Campus, jbachman@fdu.edu John S. Hull Thompson Rivers University, jhull@tru.ca Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/ttracanada_2021_conference Bachman, Jarrett R. and Hull, John S., "Understanding the Impacts of Festivals on Resident Attendees Before and During COVID-19: A First Look at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival" (2021). TTRA Canada 2021 Conference. 12. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/ttracanada_2021_conference/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the TTRA Canada at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in TTRA Canada 2021 Conference by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact scholarworks@library.umass.edu.  Understanding the Impacts of Festivals on Resident Attendees Before and During COVID-19: A First Look at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival  Introduction  Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, festivals and events had been one of the fastest growing segments in tourism (Yolal et al., 2015). Globally, festivals provide unique benefits related to the economic, cultural, and social aspects of society and communities (Richards, 2007). With developing technology and connectiveness around the world, there has been an increasing interest in shared media, including film. As such, film festivals are growing in size and popularity; however, research in this area is in its infancy (Yolal et al., 2015).   Within the film festival industry, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Two-Spirit, Queer, and Additional Identities (LGBT2Q+, broadly referred to as queer in some spaces) are experiencing exceptional growth (Amnesty International, 2019). Within Canada, three queer film festivals have been operating for over thirty years: Toronto’s Inside Out, Montreal’s Image+Nation, and the Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF). Festivals such as these help LGBT2Q+ community members fight against discrimination, gain freedom, and access films that most closely reflect who they are (Knegt, 2016). However, understanding benefits and outcomes for attendees has not been studied in a queer film festival context.  In Vancouver, VQFF is an annual queer film festival established in 1989. It is the largest queer film festival in Canada west of Toronto (Out On Screen, 2021).  VQFF provides opportunities for people of different gender identities and sexual orientations to come together and see themselves reflected in the storytelling on screen. Using event and tourism literature in conjunction with film festival literature, this research examines VQFF attendees through a sociocultural lens (Yolal et al., 2016) to obtain a better understanding of the people and impacts (i.e. community benefits, cultural-educational benefits, well-being) of VQFF both before (in-person in 2019) and during (virtually in 2020) the COVID-19 pandemic.  Literature Review According to Getz (2008), one popular tourism activity in many destinations globally is attending festivals and events. For locals, festivals bring both financial and cultural benefits (Frey & Busenhart, 1996). As a result of these benefits, residents often support festivals in their communities (Aref & Redzuan, 2009). This support is critical in the long-term sustainability of festivals, and their perceptions must be understood and incorporated into festival management.    Although festival outcomes have been studied in a variety of contexts, relatively few studies have focused on these resident perceptions (i.e. Jani, 2017; Ismail & Swart, 2015; Chen, 2011; Zhou, 2010). Contextually, these relatively few studies have focused on outcomes of large-scale events at the expense of examining smaller, cultural festivals (Jani, 2017). Although there is some literature in queer film festivals, most previous literature has focused on the content of queer film festivals and not the attendees or operation of the festival (i.e. Binnie & Klesse, 2018; Damiens, 2018; Dawson & Loist, 2018; Ford, 2017).  As a result of these gaps, the broad objective of this research was to gain an understanding of attendees to the VQFF. Given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the delivery mode and  operations of festivals and events, understanding the impacts of this transformation is important both as a comparison to pre-pandemic operations and as a source of information from which to determine future delivery modes and operation strategies of festivals and events post-pandemic.  Methodology Survey administration was conducted by festival staff in coordination with the principal investigators in both 2019 and 2020 using Qualtrics software. Survey invitations were sent to all ticket-holder email addresses the day following the end of the 11-day festival in 2019 and 2020. Second and third reminder survey invitations were sent within three weeks of the end of the festival in both years (Babbie, 2016).   In 2019, 96.8% of completed surveys were from resident attendees. In 2020, the virtual edition was geolocked to only British Columbia (BC) residents due to copyright restrictions. As such, the study used only BC resident responses from 2019 to provide a comparable respondent pool. The survey both years included questions related to attendance history, satisfaction, loyalty, and residency (Báez-Montenegro & Devesa-Fernandez, 2017; Lee et al., 2016), cultural-educational, community, and subjective well-being benefits of the festival (Yolal et al., 2016), festival programming, and demographics. These questions were asked identically in 2019 and 2020. A total of 362 BC resident responses were received from the VQFF in 2019, and 209 were received from BC residents from the VQFF in 2020.  Results For demographics, the virtual edition of VQFF in 2020 found a significantly higher diversity of respondents based on gender identity. However, no significant differences were found in sexual orientation, age, or household income. For behavioural variables, no significant differences were found in number of years attending VQFF or number of film screenings attended between the in-person version of VQFF in 2019 and the virtual version in 2020.  For benefits and outcomes, no significant differences were found between the in-person and virtual versions of VQFF regarding any of the three benefit types tested. A multiple regression analysis from each year’s survey also found similar results regarding which benefit types were most associated with loyalty to VQFF. In addition to these findings, satisfaction and loyalty were significantly different, albeit inversely. Respondents were less satisfied, but more loyal in the virtual edition of VQFF in 2020. Mixed results were also found with sponsorship impression and likelihood to patronize sponsors.   Conclusion and Discussion Focusing on obtaining an understanding of VQFF resident attendees in both 2019 and 2020 begins to address gaps in the literature regarding queer film festivals and the similarities and differences in characteristics of festivals conducted virtually compared to in-person (i.e. Jani, 2017; Yolal et al., 2016). These results provide academic contribution through their examination of demographics, benefits, and outcomes of a festival uniquely within the COVID-19 pandemic context. Practical implications were also found for festival practitioners, as the unexpected shift to a largely virtual world during COVID-19 provided an opportunity to explore alternate forms of festival delivery. A comparative analysis of VQFF in 2019 in-person and 2020 virtually  provides guidance for LGBT2Q+ tourism providers and festival and event organizers post-pandemic.  References  Amnesty International. (2019). LGBTI rights and what Amnesty is doing to protect them. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/discrimination/lgbt-rights/ Aref, F., & Redzuan, M. (2009). Community leaders’ perceptions towards tourism impacts and level of community capacity building in tourism development. Journal of Sustainable Development, 2(3), 208-213. Babbie, E. (2016). The Basics of Social Research (7th ed.), Cengage Learning. Báez-Montenegro, A., & Devesa-Fernández, M. (2017). Motivation, satisfaction and loyalty in the case of a film festival: differences between local and non-local participants. Journal of Cultural Economics, 41(2), 173-195. Binnie, J., & Klesse, C. (2018a). Comparative queer methodologies and queer film festival research. Studies in European Cinema, 15(1), 55-71.  Chen, S. (2011). Residents’ Perceptions of the Impact of Major Annual Tourism Events in Macao: Cluster Analysis. Journal of Convention & Event Tourism, 12(2), 106–128. Damiens, A. (2018). The queer film ecosystem: symbolic economy, festivals, and queer cinema’s legs. Studies in European Cinema, 15(1), 25-40. Dawson, L., & Loist, S. (2018). Queer/ing film festivals: history, theory, impact. Studies in European Cinema, 15(1), 1-24 Ford, A. (2017). Regional & Queer: Refusing to be Invisible, Creating queer space in a non-queer world. Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography [Online]. http://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/27952 Frey, B., & Busenhart, I. (1996). Special exhibitions and festivals: Culture’s booming path to glory. In V.A. Ginsburg & M. Menger (Eds.), Economics of the arts: Selected essays (pp. 275-302). Elsevier Science. Getz, D. (2008). Event tourism; definition, evolution, and research. Tourism Management, 29(3), 403-428. Ismail, S., & Swart, K. (2015). Local residents’ perceptions of the socio-economic impacts of the Breedekloof Outdoor and Wine Festival, Western Cape, South Africa. African Journal for Physical, Health Education, Recreation & Dance, 2, 99–110. Jani, D. (2017). Local attendees' perceptions of festival impacts: A factor-cluster analysis approach to the Zanzibar International Film Festival. Journal of Convention & Event Tourism, 18(4), 301-317. Kline, R. B. (2011). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (3rd ed.). Guilford Press. Lee, G., Pae, T. I., & Bendle, L. J. (2016). The role of identity salience in the leisure behavior of film festival participants: The case of the Busan international film festival. Journal of Leisure Research, 48(2), 156-177. Out On Screen. (2021). https://outonscreen.com/ Richards, G. (2007). Cultural tourism: Global and local perspectives. Haworth. Van de Wagen, L. (2005). Event management: For tourism, cultural, business and sporting events (2nd ed.). Pearson Education Australia. Yolal, M., Gursoy, D., Uysal, M., Kim, H. L., & Karacaoğlu, S. (2016). Impacts of festivals and events on residents’ well-being. Annals of Tourism Research, 61, 1-18.  Yolal, M., Rus, R. V., Cosma, S., & Gursoy, D. (2015). A pilot study on spectators’ motivations and their socio-economic perceptions of a film festival. Journal of Convention & Event Tourism, 16(3), 253-271. Zhou, Y. (2010). Resident Perceptions Toward the Impacts of the Macao Grand Prix. Journal of Convention & Event Tourism, 11(2), 138–153. 

Understanding the Impacts of Festivals on Resident Attendees Before and During COVID-19: A First Look at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival

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Understanding the Impacts of Festivals on Resident Attendees Before and During COVID-19: A First Look at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival

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