The Festival Barometer was collected for the first time in 2014. The barometer was preceded by a survey that was targeted at the visitors of small festivals in 2013. The Festival Barometer series is collected in a collaboration between festival operators and Finnish universities under the leadership of Maarit Kinnunen. The series is a longitudinal study, which means that data from the same respondent can be combined between data from different years.
The Festival Barometers examine the experiences of visitors at music festivals (excluding classical music festivals). The surveys chart changes in festivalgoers' musical preferences, practical issues related to the organisation of festivals, financial issues, and visitors' satisfaction with different aspects of festivals, such as performers, food services, and the festival site.
The festival barometer aims to collect information on Finnish festival visitors and the changes that occur in their taste in music and festivals over the years. In 2020, questions related to the COVID-19 pandemic were also included. The data includes three open-ended questions, with answers that are also suitable for qualitative analysis. LiveFIN ry, Lapland Institute for Tourism Research, the Sibelius Academy at the University of the Arts and the participating festivals were involved in the implementation of the survey.
At the beginning of the questionnaire, the respondent selects the festival to which their answers to the first part of the questionnaire relates. The respondent must have attended the festival in question in 2019 or before. In relation to this selected festival, the respondent was asked about his/her satisfaction with the festival and asked to assess its impact on the host city. The next question asked how much money the respondent spent on and off the festival site.
In the more general part of the survey, respondents were asked to rate Finnish festivals by different aspects. For example, the question asked what would make the respondent attend festivals more often. Further, the respondents were asked about issues important to the festival experience, such as performers and programming, food and beverage services, the festival area and the values of festivals.
Price-related factors were examined by asking, among other things, how much different products or services should cost. Next, respondents were asked about their likelihood of attending festivals in future years, followed by an open-ended question on the reasons why attendance was considered unlikely. The survey also examined the respondents' favourite music styles, their relationship with music and which festival they find most interesting in Finland. Finally, statements were made about the impact of the corona pandemic and an open-ended question about how the pandemic has affected the respondent's attitude towards festivals.
Background variables included year of birth, gender, largest cities, other municipalities by county, education, occupational group, social class and annual income. The questionnaire allows comparisons over time with other data in the series, as respondents from more than one year can be combined using the id variable.
The festivals examined in the study shared a link to the online questionnaire on social media, and the festival visitors who saw the link decided whether they wanted to participate in the study. Prizes, usually admission tickets to the festivals were raffled among the participants.
Before the link to the questionnaire was shared by the festivals, the online survey was sent by email to those who had responded to the previous surveys and had expressed their will to participate in the follow-up study in the 2018 survey. The respondents had provided their email address for this purpose. Of the respondents, 721 participated in the longitudinal survey (there were 206 respondents from 2014, 152 from 2016 and 363 from 2018).