Social Media as a Destination Marketing Tool for a Sustainable Diaspora Cultural Heritage Festival in Nigeria

This study explores how social media is used as a destination marketing tool for a sustainable diaspora cultural heritage festival quality in Nigeria, drawing on the theory of planned behaviour. The festival, a trip to heritage, was specifically premeditated to celebrate the slave trade period by highlighting the unique connection of African Americans history to the diaspora ancestors who were taken away as slaves through ‘the point of no return’ in Badagry –Nigeria. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative method. A structured questionnaire was developed as a research instrument to gather information aimed at examining the influence of Social media (SM), Website quality (WQ) and Online word of mouth (eWOM) on tourists’ festival satisfaction (FS) and festival revisiting intention (FRI). Data was gathered from samples of 473 diaspora tourists at the Badagry diaspora festival in Nigeria and analysed using Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with the aid of WarpPLS (7.0), and also an in-depth interview as a qualitative method was conducted with seven tourism practitioners who are the festival organisers in Lagos ministry of tourism. The findings of the study revealed that Social media (SM), festival quality (FQ), Website quality (WQ) and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) have positive and significant effects with tourists’ festival satisfaction. Additionally, this study found that festival quality has positive impact on the intention of the tourists to revisit the Badagry diaspora festival because tourist attitude is influenced by the socio cultural background of tourists. Moreover, the result revealed the partial mediating effect of festival satisfaction in the relationship between (a) SM (b) FQ (c) WQ (d) eWOM and tourist’s festival satisfaction. Similarly, cultural motivation was also found to moderate the effects between tourist festival satisfaction and festival revisiting intention (RI). Based on the findings, the implications of the festival sustainability and future research directions were discussed. Keywords: Sustainability; Heritage festival; Slaves, social media marketing; African Diaspora; tourism destinations; Nigeria.