Chaordic event co‐creation and tourism destination image: Strategic carnival shifts in the post‐pandemic era

Major street events, such as carnivals, offer a unique opportunity for destination experience value co‐creation by participants which relates directly to the destination image. This study uses service‐dominant logic (SDL) to consider the effects of event co‐creation on destination image from the point of view of a participatory process rather than from an outcome perspective. Drawing from a sample of 400 street event participants in the Patras Carnival in Greece, it examines the complexity aspects of co‐creational experience and its influence upon the destination image of the host city. Those aspects are examined by means of fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis. The findings revealed three sufficient configurations (co‐creational involvement and satisfaction; co‐creational event image; experience‐satisfaction nexus) that could affect the destination image of the host destination. The paper contributes to the theoretical body of experiential co‐creational approaches to destination image with clear managerial implications for both event organizers and destination managers.