Barriers to festival greening at Doornroosje Nijmegen, the Netherlands

Abstract

With the growth of the music festival sector also comes a growing awareness that organisers should consider environmental sustainability, since the detrimental environmental effects of festivals are omnipresent. However, many festivals are far from being ‘green’. This research investigates which barriers hinder festival greening at Doornroosje, Nijmegen. This research consists of two parts: the first identifies said barriers from expert interviews and the second deepens the understanding of festival visitors’ attitudes towards greening through a survey, since it was known beforehand that visitors are considered a barrier by Doornroosje’s organisers. The most important barriers that I found in the interviews are: lack of money, lack of knowledge, visitors’ comfort, visitors’ practices, available technology, lack of time, creation, fear of greenwashing, organisers’ practices, location and waiting for frontrunners. Of these barriers, some were previously unknown in the literature. The factors that I found in the survey that influence visitors’ attitudes are gender, willingness to pay, level of invironmental concern and type of festival. These factors of course are by no means the only factors determining visitors’ attitudes. I recommend further research would take the direction of finding solutions to the identified barriers and delve deeper into the visitors’ attitudes towards greening.