Abstract for: Exploring the Long-Term Development of Festival Tourism and Culture Policies- a Case of the Hakka Tung Blossom Festival

The Hakka Tung Blossom Festival is one of the most famous culture-led festivals in Taiwan. With a ten-year history, this festival was initiated by government policies and then extended to the private sector. While this festival is recognized as a success in branding an event and also expanding in regions and scale, the expansion in scale and scope of the festival activities seems to deviate from its original image. Building a successful festival requires a long-term accumulation of event images, infrastructural resources, community involvements, and the interactions of various social-political-economical factors, and it is even more difficult making event tourism sustainable. This study uses system dynamics to analyze the development process of this festival, and identified the structural changes through out the developmental stages. Results and implications from the derived model are also discussed.