The main purposes of this study are to find the causality among residents’ loyalty to anenvironmental festival and its influential factors and, based upon the findings, to exploreenvironmental festivals’ developmental vision with special reference to Hampyung ButterflyFestival. Under these aims, this study applies structural equation modeling(SEM). The structural model for SEM analysis is composed of four independent variables which consist of residents’attachment(RA) to their region where its own environmental festival is provided, residents’participational intention(RP) to the festival, the economic effects(EE) of the festival, and thecommunication(CM) between the residents and the festival providers, one intermediate variable,residents’ satisfaction(RS) from the festival, and one final dependent variable, residents’ loyalty(RL)to the festival. The causality among these variables is hypothesized as follows; Among theindependent variables, RP, EE, and CM have effects only on RS and RA has an effect on both RSand RL. And RS has an effect on RL.
The facts found from the SEM are summed up as follows; First, ① RP and CM turn out to havestatistically significant effects on RS, ② RA is confirmed to have a statistically very significant effecton both RS and RL, and ③ RS is also proved to show a statistically very significant effect on RL. Second, the total effects on RL of independent variables are stronger in the order of RA, CM, andRP. Third, EE seems to have no effect on RS, consequently no effect on RL, either. The reason whyEE has no effect looks like to be due to environmental festivals’ peculiar features.
These findings offer the following suggestions for the future of environmental festivals in the partof festival providers. Firstly, to be successful in the festival, they have to provoke RL above all. Second, to do so, they need to encourage RA, CM, and RP in the mentioned order in the long run. Third, but for a short period, they had better concentrate upon promoting RS.