Consumer behavior in a religious event experience: an empirical assessment of value dimensionality among volunteers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present volunteering in tourism events as a sort of spontaneous community participation that has far‐reaching consequences for destination management. It chooses the concept of value to explore volunteering experience in an international religious mega‐event, using Holbrook's value typology (efficiency, social value, play, spirituality). Design/methodology/approach – The authors undertake this objective by means of testing psychometric properties of the four value scales, as well as providing a causal model of relationships among value dimensions and overall perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty or commitment to volunteering in a special event tested with MBPLS, a particular algorithm for the partial least squares methodology. Findings – The results confirm the reliability and validity of the scales tested in a sample of 1,638 volunteers, collected via e‐mail from the database of a religious mega‐event held in Valencia in July 2006. They also confirm a relationship among overall perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty or commitment as a chain of behavioral constructs. Research limitations/implications – One can find implications for the relevant weight of volunteers as peculiar stakeholders of mega‐events. For consumer behavior researchers, the chain of effects among value dimensions and behavioral constructs is once more relevant, although the findings are only related to volunteers at religious events. Practical implications – For destination marketing managers, this study can throw light on the profile of volunteers for event marketing and how they behave in their own experience as relevant stakeholders in the organization of a mega‐event. Originality/value – Very few works devote their interest to value dimensionality in a marketing event context, despite the richness of that sort of tourism experience. Perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty or commitment have been investigated among volunteers in sport or cultural mega‐events, but rarely in religious mega‐events.