Social Cure and Savouring: Attending Live Music Events Is Associated With Well‐Being and Behaviour Changes

ABSTRACT There is strong evidence demonstrating a link between engagement with live music and health and wellbeing outcomes. Much of this research focuses on traditional forms of engagement such as playing an instrument or purposefully using live music as a targeted health intervention. There is less research exploring the wellbeing consequences of regular gig and/or festival attendance or the mechanisms for the effects of such attendance. Drawing on the ‘social cure’ approach to group membership and well‐being, we carried out two complementary studies investigating this relationship through semi‐structured interviews ( n = 20) and a pre‐registered cross‐sectional survey ( n = 2021). In line with the social cure, results suggest a relationship, albeit weak, between regular event attendance and well‐being, contingent on group processes within the audience (identification, relationality, collective self‐realisation) as well as support from event staff—a novel finding. Additionally, we observe that individuals who experience attendance‐related well‐being often exhibit affective and behavioural changes that seem to actively reinforce their overall sense of well‐being. To our knowledge, this finding points to a potential positive‐feedback loop between wellbeing and subsequent behaviour that has not been widely reported in existing research. Our survey results have been certified as computationally reproducible by an independent statistician.