How we think we felt: The importance of recollected experience and how to capture it.

Emotional response related to live music events is a vital component of the experience but the relationship between this aspect of the experience and belief about the event (satisfaction), and any ensuing attitudinal and behavioural change after the event is not well understood. Established methods for capturing emotion provide a basis but tend to ignore the ‘collective’ experience felt at events and the importance of recollected experience and emotion. Here it is argued that no single method will adequately capture this complexity of emotional response and that a combination of tools is needed. These methods will be explained and critically discussed in terms of practicality of application and usefulness of data. The discussion is based on a number of trial studies which will provide practical real-life examples of the advantages and pitfalls encountered. Chapter Structure To understand experience we need to understand emotion and memory. The kind of experiences provided by festivals and events are designed to engender an emotive response, to be out of the ordinary and therefore be memorable and it is these memories of the emotions felt which are most likely to affect changes in future attitude and behaviour. The first section of this chapter will therefore provide an overview of: emotion memory of emotion experience inducing emotion To understand emotions we need to find ways to capture, describe and assess them. Any methods need to be able to explore the type, strength and consequences of the emotions felt at the time and remembered. It is also necessary to discover the aspects of the experience that triggered the emotional response in order to better design events which stimulate desirable and memorable emotions. The second part of this chapter therefore discusses the different approaches used in capturing emotional response. How to measure When to measure What to do with measures In the final section several trial studies and examples are presented which illustrate some of the different methods used in capturing emotions. These are critically reviewed in terms of theoretical validity and practical application. The chapter concludes by proposing a mixed methods approach to any evaluation of emotional response to event experience. The methods suggested recognise : The importance of collective experience and the sharing of memories The mediating effect of memory The factors, other than the event, which affect both immediate and remembered emotional response