An investigation of factors affecting tourists' intention to revisit Thailand as a culinary tourism destination.

Abstract

While factors affecting tourists’ revisit intention to a destination have been identified and examined through a proliferation of studies, the research on antecedents of intention to revisit a destination for culinary tourism reasons are still limited. The study advances existing studies using the extended combination of MGB and TPB to measure temporal destination revisit intentions. The short and long term revisit intention models were developed with an aim to investigate factors underlying tourists’ revisit intentions to Thailand for culinary tourism purposes. Belief-based measures of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control borrowed from the TPB model was added to the original MGB in order to evaluate an influence of local Thai food experiences as a motivational base of revisiting Thailand. The study also compared differences of the models based on nationality (Japanese and British) and type of visitor (first- timers and repeaters). The study employed a mixed method approach using semi-structured interview to explore motivational factors for local Thai food consumption and for the intentions to revisit to Thailand. The questionnaire survey was performed as the second stage of the study to identify three motivational factors for consuming local Thai food and eight motivational factors for revisiting Thailand. There were two common motivators between the two contexts. The relationships between local food experiences and intentions to return over time were examined. The findings suggested moderating effects of nationality and type of visitor on the models for short and long term revisit intention. The findings of this study are considered to contribute to the theoretical development in tourist behaviour and food consumption research by increasing the body of literature regarding factors affecting tourists’ destination revisit intention for gastronomy reasons.