Behavioral study of social media followers of a music event: a case study of a Chinese music festival

Purpose - With the increasing importance of social media in promoting events, understanding the relationship between event followers' motivations and their behaviors on an event's social media platform becomes a key success factor to attract event-goers. Previous studies on exploring the relationship between social media and event attendees have concentrated mostly on a Western context social media, for example, Facebook, and Western festivals; studies concerning the East or China are scant. This study uses the Strawberry Music Festival in China as a case study and researches its two official social media platforms: WeChat and Weibo. Design/methodology/approach - The research explores the hedonic and utilitarian motivation of social media followers and investigates followers' browsing and participation behaviors as well as the influence of their usage behaviors on intentions to attend an event. A total of 190 valid responses were collected through an online questionnaire from social media followers of the music festival. Findings - The findings reveal that both utilitarian and hedonic motivation have significant effects on browsing and participation behaviors. More importantly, browsing and participation behaviors also affect the intentions to attend an event and the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) effect. Practical implications - The research results provide practical insights for event organizers regarding potential event-goers' usage patterns on social media platforms and their intention to visit events. Originality/value - This study contributes to the authors' understanding of the relationship between event attendance and social media behavior, in particular of the East.