We Can't Do It Alone!

In an increasingly competitive music festival landscape, both commercial and nonprofit organizers are under pressure to ensure the long-term sustainability of their events, with environmental and social impacts becoming key factors in standing out and maintaining their position in the market. Communication is a pivotal tool for music festivals to support and implement sustainability initiatives in their management. In fact, research has shown that transparent and proactive communication about sustainability can offer several benefits. It helps build audience trust in the festival's image and fosters a sense of collective responsibility, potentially influencing audience behaviour. The term used to describe an organization's communication of its sustainability commitment is corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication. The aim of this study is to analyse the CSR communication of Dutch music festivals and to identify the narratives and frames they employ, whether they focus on building trust in their initiatives, or generate collaboration with their audience. A qualitative method of data collection was adopted for this study with forty-one data units originated from websites of Dutch music festivals. The method of data analysis was the qualitative content analysis, which allowed to investigate CSR-related contents on websites, often found under 'sustainability' pages. The topic addressed, the framing of the message, the tone of voice and the aim of the communication action were investigated in each data unit of the dataset. Applying the framework of Elving et al. (2015) on CSR communication to the dataset, four major categories were deductively identified: 'informative', 'value-driven', 'future-oriented', and 'audience-involvement CSR communication'. For each major category, two subcategories inductively emerged from the data. The findings emphasize that CSR communication by Dutch music festivals serves four aims: to inform and educate about their commitments, to persuade and build trust in their sustainability efforts, to encourage future change and shared responsibility, and to actively involve the audience in their initiatives. Contrary to the original framework, where the division between strategic and communicative action was related to major categories, in this study, it was attributed to the subcategories. Specifically, four subcategories focused on strategic action, aiming to build trust in the festivals' commitment to sustainability. The other four emphasized communicative action, fostering a sense of community and shared knowledge with the audience. Moreover, gain-framed messaging and a conversational human voice were evident in nearly all subcategories, except one, which used an organizational tone. Thus, Dutch music festivals appear to adopt a balanced approach to online CSR communication, characterized by an overall positive framing and a conversional human voice.