Conceptualisation and operationalisation of event and festival Experiences: Creation of an event experience scale

Experience production is becoming increasingly important in leisure and tourism, especially in the field of events and festivals, which are seen as prime manifestations of the experience economy. However, research on event experiences has generally been concerned with economic impacts and visitor motivations (Gursoy, Kim, Uysal, 2004). Few studies have attempted to operationalize and quantitatively analyze experiences, possibly because scholars have not yet reached a consensual definition regarding the essence of experiences (Walls, Okumus, Wang, Kwun, 2011). This article develops an Event Experience Scale (EES), for event experiences. In this exploratory study the item generation and selection for this scale are presented in three phases: specifying the domain of construct and generation of items, item selection, and scale purification. An 18-item scale, comprised of 4 dimensions: affective engagement, cognitive engagement, physical engagement and experiencing newness, with reliable cronbach's alphas (.83, .86, .86, and .87), emerged. Implications for theoretical and practical research are discussed.