Purpose This study examines how festivals celebrating Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) produce liminal and liminoid spaces and how these dynamics shape tourist behaviour and contribute to temporary overtourism. It explores the implications of these processes for resident and visitor well-being and assesses the potential of nudge theory as a behavioural intervention strategy. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative single-case study was conducted in San Andrés Mixquic, Mexico, during the 2022 Day of the Dead celebration. Data were collected through non-participant observation with field notes, semi-structured interviews with residents, structured interviews with tourists and content analysis of user-generated material from TripAdvisor and Facebook. Findings The Day of the Dead celebration in Mixquic operates predominantly as a liminoid space characterised by leisure-oriented and consumptive practices. These dynamics generate predictable patterns of tourist behaviour that contribute to temporary overtourism, producing spatial saturation and negatively affecting perceived well-being among both residents and visitors. The findings reveal a persistent gap between tourists' experiential engagement and meaningful participation in ritual practices. Originality/value This study advances event and festival research by explicitly linking liminoid spaces in ICH festivals to temporary overtourism, an underexplored relationship in the literature. It offers a holistic perspective that integrates tourist behaviours and resident perceptions within the same analytical framework and introduces nudge theory as a behaviourally grounded and context-sensitive tool for managing overtourism and promoting more respectful engagement in culturally sensitive festival settings.
Aguirre et al. (Wed,) studied this question.