Research Projects 2008:
Eclipse Event Motivation and Satisfaction

During Eclipse City's previous 10 years of Total Solar Eclipse event organization, thousands of "eclipse-chasers", scientists, astronomy amateurs, university professors and students, incentive travelers, mom-and-pop, newly weds, entrepreneurs and professionals of all kind have joined on our journey to some of the most remote areas on the earth, such as the Antarctic Continent, the Libyan Desert, the South Pacific, and the Gobi Desert in China. Every time along the trip and after, it has been incredible to listen to our customers telling us their own stories about eclipse experiences. Stories about how they experienced their very first eclipse observation, how excited they are when an eclipse is happening, how unforgettable an eclipse experience is and how irresistible it is to join the next eclipse when it comes along. Due to all these interesting stories and reflections, we at Eclipse City feel a strong urge to thoroughly understand our customers' opinions, behaviors and intentions when it comes down to being part of an eclipse event. To give us some eagerly awaited answers, we established the Eclipse City Research Center in the beginning of 2008 and launched our first research project on understanding the total solar eclipse event visiting motivation and satisfaction. This research was jointly supervised by the Leisure Tourism and Environment department of Wageningen University of the Netherlands. Wageningen University is the leading European university in Life Sciences. Researchers and students focus on the fields of nutrition, health, nature and the living environment. Characterized by a world-wide, trans-disciplinary, critical and innovative approach, the Leisure Tourism and Environment department focuses on the relationship between leisure and environment, with a special focus on tourism.

This research project was primarily conducted by Mr. Liu Si, who was appointed by the Eclipse City Research Center as the first research manager in 2008. His research report was originally written and published in English and partly administrated in German and Chinese according to the multilingual research environment. During the Eclipse-Day on the 1st August, 2008, an on-site questionary survey was administrated by the research team at Eclipse City's day camp in Jiayuguan region, northwest China. Information about the motives for attending an eclipse event, visitors’ satisfaction level and intentions of returning to the event, plus visitors' personal background were collected. In total, around 150 international visitors have participated in this survey and 93 copies of the questionnaires were successfully collected in the end. The results of this survey were analyzed by the SPSS program and several major objectives were being focused, such as the average profile of eclipse event visitors; top motives of attending to an eclipse event; visiting satisfaction of different event components, and visitors' intention of returning to the next event, etc. Furthermore, the relationships exist among the motives, satisfaction and re-visiting intention will be identified. On 16^th of January 2009, this research was officially published in a form of master thesis at both Wageningen University and Eclipse City's Research Center.

We sincerely thank all the customers have participated in our first research project in 2008. The results of this research will definitely help Eclipse City to keep providing the best event service and organization to all our customers. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or comments regarding this research.

Liu Si (si.liu@eclipse-city.com)

Research Manager

Eclipse-City, Ltd.
Research Center