Should there be more showers at the summer music festival? Studying the contextual dependence of resource consuming conventions and lessons for sustainable tourism

Russell Hitchings, Alison Browne, Tullia Jack

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Summer music festivals that involve a few days of camping have often been linked to sustainability agendas. Yet relevant studies have so far overlooked how these events can themselves serve as experiments in less resource consumptive living. Building on a wider interest in the cultural evolution of cleanliness norms, this paper explores how attendees come to use water in personal washing at two UK festivals. Through survey, observation and interview research, it examines how current festival goers respond to the disruption of their usual washing regimes, paying particular attention to how a combination of social and infrastructural cues serve to encourage the emergence of a temporary new cleanliness culture. Doing so highlights the value of seeing human resource consumption as a matter of dynamic collective convention more than fixed personal preference since these respondents were seen to embrace a new relationship with washing that was otherwise deemed unthinkable. This leads to a broader discussion of how visitor needs and the social world are most usefully studied by both future festival organisers and the wider field of sustainable tourism research.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-19
Number of pages19
JournalJournal of Sustainable Tourism
Volume26
Issue number3
Early online date17 Aug 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Keywords

  • festivals
  • cleanliness
  • water consumption
  • social norms

Research Beacons, Institutes and Platforms

  • Sustainable Consumption Institute

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