The Dissertation Research- Austronesian of Festival

tINTRODUCTION
The dissertation research area is about visitors’ motivation in the ‘Austronesian of Festival’, and the weblog is to post our research process and discover about our research area. Why to choose this topic and festival? This is an only one international aboriginal people festival and hold in the city which has most aborigine people in Taiwan; however, the reason to choose this research area is that government in Taiwan has no deeper data and analysis in visitors’ motivation for research, therefore, we aim to find out the motivation from visitors and analysis their attendance purpose to verify with methods, finally, we can provide the research result and bring recommend out to government to improve this festival.
BRIEF OVERVIEW
As I researched about this festival before, this festival is one of the twelve character festivals from different countries in Taiwan and selected by Tourism Bureau; that is means, government put the aboriginal culture for a focus promo event for Taiwan. We should review literatures which not only discuss about visitor motivation, but also other countries which has aboriginal festival as well, to compare with their visitor’s motivation and purpose to attendance festival; as the topic is to research motivation, we had set three objectives and hypothesis to identify the motivates for tourists to attendance this event; however, the methodology we use is questionnaire, to prove and measure the ‘motivation measurement’ which bring out by Lee et al. (2003) is the thirty-two motivation items in seven underlying dimensions.
RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
The objectives we set to understand the reason for tourists to attendance this festival are suggested from Crompton and McKay (1997) that “identifying and prioritizing motives is a key ingredient in understanding visitors” decision process; however, due to the original task feedback, to set a explicit research goal, now we are focusing on three aspects:
1. To identify the underlying dimensions of motivations for visitors to participate the Austronesian of festival.
2. To identify attendance visitors have multi-purpose to Austronesian of Festival.
3. To consider the main target group demographic characteristics.
Thus, the hypothesis for this research is based on above three research objectives, and support by previous researchers’ research result. Furthermore, the framework is going to plan for more complete, the schedule I set before is to contact with 10 friends who are located in the county which is hold this festival, each person in charge of 30 questionnaires to spread by paper in the festival hold location, it will get 310 questionnaire samples; in this stage, the questionnaire will to extend into all Taitung county to research the visitor’s motivation, the strategy we bring out is to put our questionnaire in the stores which paste the festival poster by government, we consider that if people visit the festival because of the poster, and they will see the questionnaire as well, and we will take the questionnaire back after one week since the festival finish, this is the way to extend the questionnaire for get more visitor’s feedback and do not need to spend our time that much.
CONCLUSION
This reflective work is focusing on the objectives setting, evident it to worth to research and based on literatures research, more, to improve the framework structure; those are key elements for this dissertation research to be successful.
REFERENCE
Crompton L. John & McKay L. Stacey, 1997. Motives of visitors attending festival events. Annual of tourism research, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 425-439.
Lee Choong-Ki & Lee Yong-Ki & Bruce E. Wicks, 2003. Segmentation of festival motivation by nationality and satisfaction. Tourism management, [Online] Vol. 25, pp. 61-70. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9R-48R7C0Y-1&_user=634187&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000027518&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=634187&md5=11ec74f4f232a208fb6bc5ded757705d [Accessed 5th August 2009].

Getting closer with Taiwan's aboriginal culture- Part 3

At final to thoutht about my aspect for dissertation topic and related with the Austronesian of Festival,

i would like to research about the motivation from visitors to attendance this festival,

and bring up this dissertation result for suggest to the festival planner,

and use for improve or increase the attraction point.

My objective for this dissertation have three aspect, there are

1. To identify the underlying dimensions of motivations for visitors to participate the
Austronesian of festival.
2. To identify attendance visitors have multi-purpose to Austronesian of Festival.
3. To consider the main target group demographic characteristics.

Getting closer with Taiwan's aboriginal culture- Part 2

As I had already mention about this festival before, because of now I'm not in Taiwan,





therefore, I was offer :) my friend to do the research for me!





For my proposal, i woul like to know the date of this festival, according to my research,





this festival has no steady date to hold, all I known is this event will be hold in summer time,





every year, and changed the festival topic every year as well,





in this regard, I thought that tourists will attract by topic of the festival,





for example, the topic in 2005 is the 'voyage culture of Austronesian people', in this year,





as the topic that the government invited performance teams which from Philippines,





Republic of Fiji, Hawaii..., those countries or area have aborigine people;





on the other hand, the topic in 2006 was 'dye and weave', about the aboriginal cloths,





therefore, they invited one of University which in Taiwan have a major is textiles and clothing





to plan this festival together; furthermore, the topic in 2007 was the 'aboriginal delicacies'.





In this regard, I'm really interesting the topic this year and how the topic attract people to

attendance festival.

Getting closer with Taiwan's aboriginal culture- Part 1

Austronesia of festival have already held for 10 years since 1999,during 10 years,



they changed 3 different held government orgnization, each are:

• Department of Culture and Tourism of Taitung County Government


• Indigenous People Bureau


• Tourism and Travel Bureau,

At the beining, this festival was held on December, and they discovered that this was the wrong

season for Taitung county to held this event, because of that main point event such like

aborigine's harvest festival, almost held in summer time, this though that Austronesia of Festival

if held in winter is not suit for the season and cultural reason over there, and this festival was not

increase visitors came to Taitung at that time, according to new Taiwan magazine in 2003

vol. 354 mention about the project plan team cannot attract people to visit this county by

aboriginal culture and unable to push local tourism by the culture natural resource and tourism

resource over there.

This is what I'm going to research about 'how to make visitors return?', Taitung has most

popular of aborigine people, there have natural tourism resource, but if they cannot keep

visitors by this festival which is the main county promote festival, how can they popularize

this culture to oversea visitors, even Taiwaneses?

Make it Happened, the beginning, Part 3

In this stage, I'm searching for similar festivals in the countries which around the Pacific Ocean, why have I chosen the Pacific Ocean? Austronesian, according to David Blundell presented in 2003, Austronesia is extends from Taiwan to the Chilean territory of Easter Island, from Borneo to Madagascar, in this area, the aborigine people all called for Austronesian; the Austronesian culture was ignored for most countries of the world at past, nowadays, become an important affair and re-discussed. Do you know, the Maori people who lived in Australia speak same language with one of ethnic aborigine in Taiwan which called "Paiwan"? And, the artistic products between austronesian in TW and Maori have similar image as well, it's attract me to researched the aborigine festival which come from other countries and in the Pacific Ocean. Festival of Pacific Arts is a festival held for every 4 years, the host country is defferent each hold year sicnce 1972, aim at share and exchange each cultures at this festival, the participants are increasing compare with past. The important experience that Taiwan have to learn from this festival is, they"makes a significant contribution to the evolution of Pacific Island identities", nowadays, the aborigine festivals held in Taiwan become add too much commercial element, traditional cultural meaning disappear very quickly, this is one of main point that I want to research and do questionnaire to visitors ask about what kind of aborigine culture image influence you during this festival? Are we promo our aborigine culture successful? Most people knew that Maori come from Australia, do you know Taiwan have aborigine people as same as well?

Make it Happened, the beginning, Part 2

Actually, i've already prepared my dissertation context since october,

because i knew that this festival is really hard to get any databases,

for example: visitor amount, in Taiwan, there is almost no any research about festival,

especially the aspect of "culture impact", no matter from government or individual

research,therefore, i'm trying to get some relationship from local people,

especially the planner from thisfestival and local expert.This vacation,

i was back to Taiwan and go to the county which held this Austronesian of festival,

and got some useful information from my university teacher then went to Taitung for

searchingsome experts and planner,it was really funny because i knew some people from

Taitung, they knew these of experts,that day, this famous expert had other event,

i went to their and help them for their event,i was trying to introduced myself from my

ability in help this event,after that, I got a host job among this event and impression them, therefore, they gave me other useful information after the event, now I have some people who are powerful in Taiwan's culture industry and related with The Festival of Austronesian, I am going to contact with them

and trying to do some interviews about as they know development within this event.

Make it Happened, the beginning, Part 1

Wooooo, about the dissertation, I already thought about that since school opened,
at the beginning, I was effected from Peter's first assignment which talk about financial of some main festivals held in London, at that time, I used to be focus on London Fashion Week, so that, I wanted to research about fashion brand(didn't decided) how to hold event to promotion their brand image. However, one of my friend told me" why don't you do some special topic? It's really normal in western country." Therefore, I was started to think about some special topic and try so hard, so I just though that I'm come from Taiwan and we have aborigine culture, and also, there have some special festivals, it is make me curious to understand their culture, so now, I'm change to research about our aborigines and going to choose one of main festival to investigate.



Yi-Wen H