Through informal conversations with the campers at Hove, I gathered an overall positivity towards the environmental aspects of the festival such as being able to sell waste. However, some people at the camps described the lack of availability of trash cans and signs on them to sort trash as problematic. Additional comments included the fact that sorting trash is not a positive thing when it is burned at the collection site. This directly contradicts the organizer’s attempt to explain the waste treatment process through signs and information handouts. On a positive note, some people suggested during informal conversations that they think a festival could potentially be beneficial for the environment not because it is a zero waste event, but because it creates
consciousness; it is not the festival itself that can be positive, but the outcome of the people that attend.
In the case of the Øya festival, through informal conversations it was possible to learn that the attendees think of the event as an “urban, cool festival” but it doesn’t offer enough time to “learn” about environmental living. Since there was a big focus in the fact that the food at Øya is organic, some attendees suggested to have information about why this is important or relevant. For example, they proposed better information on where food comes from, why it is organic, and why should they choose to eat it.
67
In general comment, people were pleased with the 2014 Øya event. The attendees mentioned that the location of the festival at Tøyen offered better facilities such as toilets and easy access; they can walk here from their homes. However, as some of the attendees agreed, this festival has a higher tempo and there was not enough time for informal conversations with the attendees. This is why the rest of this chapter will be based on the analysis of the surveys carried out at both festivals.
The analysis of the survey is what reveals the perception that the festival participants have towards the environmental stand of both events. The surveys were analyzed to find correlations between different variables such as attendance to the festival and whether or not the participants recycled at the festival. By reading into these correlations it became noticeable that the environmental efforts of both festivals are noted by the participants and that in general they are mainly positively influenced during the days of the events.
The survey asked the participants to choose the environmentally-related activities that they usually do in their daily life. The option “Recycling” was the most common among the participants followed by “Restricted use of a private car”. The answers to this question can be seen on Figure 5 shown by number of times that an option was selected. The option “None of the above” was only selected by 6 of the respondents, which shows that the majority of the attendees have previously been environmentally active. To contrast these answers, another question asked the participants if they knew which environmental activities they could carry out at the festival events. The
participants chose “Recycling stations” as the most known activity, which aligns with their background.
68
Figure 5 Activities by participant and activities at festival
As can be seen on Figure 5, the participants’ environmental awareness before the event is correlational to their interest in the activities found at the event. This means that the strategies used by the event are noticed by the attendees. Additionally, we can mention that recycling is the most noticeable activity as well as the most prominent activity by the participants before the event. This may be due to the context of Norway as a country that motivates recycling, or to the fact that this is a strategy that is easy to visualize and measure.
The next part of this analysis relates to the question about the participants’ choice of activities during the festival. This question was included in the survey as a link between the strategies that the festivals introduce at the event, and the involvement of the
attendees. The answers show that most of the respondents to the survey chose “Used the recycling stations for recycling” as the activity they did to contribute to the
environment. Only 3.4% of the respondents chose that they did “None of the above”
activities at the festival. Additionally, 37% of the respondents chose “Visited the information stations to learn more tips”, which is not a very high number and could be the result of unattractive information stations or lack of time at the event. These issues will be further discussed in Chapter 6.
191
4.5 Which activities do you carry out in your daily life?
5.1 Which activites are carried out at the festival?
69
Figure 6 Activities by participant daily life and at festival
A statistical test is implemented to further analyze the results from the survey. When performing a Pearson correlation coefficient test to the variables, it is possible to find out whether they are related to one another or not. The Person’s r reveals both the type of correlation between two variables and the strength of their relation; it shows if the correlation is positive or negative and weak or strong (Johannessen 2009:127) If we take the number of people who answered that they recycle in their daily lives (n=191) and correlate it to the number of people who said that they knew that it was possible to recycle at the festival (n=217), the Pearson’s correlation test will say that there is a positive yet weakly significant correlation between those two variables (Pearson’s r=0.153) (Johannessen 2009:127). All of the tests can be found on Appendix 5.
When running the same test to see if there is a correlation between the people who recycle in their daily lives and the people who have used the recycling stations at the festival event, the Pearson’s test shows again a positive yet weak significant correlation (Pearson’s r=0.178).
Continuing with the statistical analysis we can compare the number of people who answered that they do not carry out any environmentally friendly activities in their daily
191
4.5 Which activities do you carry out in your daily life?
5.2 What have you done during the festival that contributed to the environment?
70
lives to those who did not do any activities to contribute to the environment at the festival. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient shows a positive relatively significant correlation between the variables (Pearson’s r=0.211).
Then I tested the variables of people who said they have consideration for the food they eat, and the ones that ate mainly ecological food at the festival. The correlation test found again a positive significant correlation (Pearson’s r=0.326). However, the number of people that said they ate mainly ecological food at the festival was larger than those who already had this behavior in their daily lives, 46% of the participants ate ecological food at the festival and 42.2% had considered the food they eat from before. Despite the differences not being too big, it is possible to say that offering environmental friendly food at the festival is an efficient strategy.
The next section focuses on the lessons that may have been learned by those attending the festival. I will try to compare the communicative-environmental strategies of Hove and Øya in the 2014 events and the participants’ behavior.