The Centrality of Religious Festival Experience and Satisfaction on the Subjective Well-Being of Visitors: Evidence from Udupi Paryaya Festival

Themed public celebrations, known as festivals, that explore and promote different aspects of local culture contribute significantly to the economic and social well-being of regions. They provide a distinctive image to the place and create a unique, shared, and memorable experience (ME) for visitors. In India, large-scale festivals represent a source of social interaction that generates positive socio-cultural, hedonic, and functional benefits, which are believed to increase happiness and, subsequently, subjective well-being. This paper explores the religious essence of the historic sacred religious site in Udupi, Krishna Matha. To do so, it examines visitors' ME from attending a unique biennial religio-cultural festival known as Paryaya. The quantitative study investigates the impact of ME on subjective well-being (SWB) and the mediating role of satisfaction on this relationship. The study results show that ME has a significant influence on satisfaction and SWB. This study is one of the first in the indigenous tourism literature to test a framework that characterises the relationship between ME, satisfaction, and SWB of visitors in a religious festival setting. It provides a new perspective from which festival organisers and tourism policymakers at the local and state government levels can respond to visitors' needs and plan for the sustainability of such mega-events. Locally, organisers and managers of Krishna Matha may focus on continuing their profile-raising outreach efforts on behalf of the location.