Performance and Social Network Structure of Festival Research: A Reflective of 1978–2020

Abstract In this study, a bibliometric review of festival research is conducted to provide a valuable overview of the current state of the field, and in so doing, lays out a roadmap for future research. Based on hospitality-, tourism-, and leisure-related journals indexed in Scopus database, performance, relational and intellectual structure of festival scholarship are undertaken using Biblioshiny and VosViewer software to generate descriptive statistics and social networks structures of 955 articles. For almost five decades of research effort, the last five years have been the most productive period although citation structure has been relatively low. A greater proportion of the articles were published in Event Management with Saayman M, USA and North-West University being the most prolific author, country and institution, respectively. A co-citation network analysis unearthed four major themes: (1) festival impacts, sustainability, and management; (2) festival quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions; (3) festival authenticity, experiences, and revisit intentions; and (4) motivation and segmentation. This study is the first to undertake a performance and social structure analysis of prior festival research using bibliometric methodology.