Abstract:

Indonesia, as the country richest in cultural resources in ASEAN, has opportunities to maintain its cultural resources and thereby increase tourism, and hosting cultural events is one of the ways to do so. Alluring events can motivate one to leave one’s place, visit the place conducting cultural events, and spend money to procure services at the event site. Dieng, a highland in Indonesia, rich in cultural resources held cultural event namely Dieng Culture Festival since 2009 and becoming one of national event. The focus of this study is the contribution of cultural events and the other elements of a tourist destination to the formation of the destination image which then leads to positive behavioural intention. This research used PLS-SEM to analyze the effect of cultural events, event brand, place brand, and structural elements to the affective and cognitive image. Respondents of this research represented anyone who had visited The Dieng Culture Festival 6, 7, or 8. This research has found that place brand and structural elements significantly affect both cognitive and affective image. The other aforementioned variables, cultural events, and cultural event brand, were determined significantly to affect the affective image of a tourist destination only. In the case of Dieng and the The Dieng Culture Festival, the affective image has a more significant effect on the formation of the overall image than cognitive image. In this study, the researcher also found that the overall image of tourist destination significantly affects positive behavioural intention (intention to revisit ann intention to recommend) of the tourist to a certain tourist destination.