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.