농어촌축제 방문객의 지출액 결정요인에 관한 연구

A Study on the Determinants of Rural Festival Visitors’ Expenditure

Rural festivals can vitalize the rural regional economy. This study aims to derive the determinants of rural festival visitors’ expenditure, and then provide strategies for increasing visitors’ expenditure which leads to rural vitalization. Questionnaire survey was carried out for visitors of two types of rural festivals, that is, Autumn Gourd Festival and Akyang Persimmon Festival. Using the results of questionnaire survey, the determinants of visitors’ expenditure were derived and their marginal effects were estimated for total expenditure, food expenses, agricultural specialty purchase costs, experience costs, and transportation costs. Tobit model was utilized which is proper for the analysis where the values of dependant variables are partly censored and so constrained. Visitors’ residence were turned out to be the only variable among the demographic characteristics which has significant impact on their expenditure, especially on total expenditure, agricultural specialty purchase costs, and transportation costs. It means that the nearer visitors’ residence is from the festival place, the less their expenditure is. It implies that the measures are need to be prepared to induce the visitors from the far location and at the same time, promote the expenditure of visitors coming from near. Visiting behavioral characteristics such as festival type, accompanying behaviour, number of visiting, and time of stay turned out to have significant impact on expenditure by item as well as total expenditure. In particular, as time of stay gets longer, both total expenditure and expenditure by item increase. It means that how much time visitors stay in festivals is an important determinant of visitors’ expenditure. It also implies that experience programs that induce visitors’ participation by family unit need to be developed so that they spend longer time and spend more money in festivals. On the basis of the results of this study, visiting behavioral characteristics rather than the demographic characteristics of festival visitors should be apprehended more precisely and it will lead to successful festivals.