Chapter 1: Children's Engagement in Event Tourism: A Conceptual Framework

In recent years, research on children's tourism experiences has gained prominence, as children are becoming an increasingly vital market for the tourism industry. While events are a main sector of the industry and host millions of children every year, there is a lack of research specifically focussed on children's experiences in events. This chapter focusses on children's entertainment events which can provide children with a satisfying, memorable and educational experience. This study has developed a framework to facilitate deeper mixed studies on children's experiences in event tourism. The framework is composed of four pillars based on various social, tourism and event theories and models, including the Cognition–Affect–Behaviour (CAB) theoretical framework, the Orchestra Model of Experience, the Event Experience Scales (EES), the Theory of Child Well-being and the Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change (TTM). The framework can be used by future researchers as an analytical evaluation tool to study children's experiences in different types of events and understand the mechanisms of behaviour change in this context.