An investigation into the factors that motivate an individual to attend a UK rock music festival.

Abstract

The research aimed to identify individual’s motivations to attend UK rock music festivals. It critically explored how peer groups, musical preferences, socialisation, and cultural capital and escapism influence attendance at UK rock music festivals. The project is broken down into five main sections; introduction, literature review, methodology, results and discussion and a conclusion and recommendations. The researcher looked at previous studies and literature surrounding the topic question to provide a basis for the primary research and to identify any gaps in the research. It was concluded that there was a lack of research surrounding motivations to attend UK rock music festivals specifically. The researcher conducted qualitative research using a semi-structured interview, interviewing nine different individuals who had either planned to attend a UK rock music festival or had done so previously. Nine interviews were conducted by the end of the research. Once the data had been collected a thematic analysis was used to identify the individual motivations to attend. The findings show that there are always more than one motivating factor, although significantly within UK rock music festivals, it is all about the music. There are contributing factors that make an individual want to go but ultimately if the headline acts and the overall music is not right then the individuals lose that motivation to want to go.