Food tourism: consumer behaviour in relation to traditional food

Abstract

Traditionally, sun, sea, and sand are the major reasons why tourists travel, however, in post-modern tourism, tourism products are no longer restricted by these types of natural resources. In order to extend the tourism life cycle and to attract more inbound tourists from overseas, more and more niche markets are developing. One such market that has been highlighted recently is food tourism. Over the past two decades, food tourism is emerging as an area of practical interest for both the host country and tourists as food is an inevitable experience at the travel destination. Food, unlike other natural resources can be provided year-round by utilizing local ingredients. For destination managers there is a need to develop a sense of regional distinctiveness and to maintain the local cultural traditions of their regions. For tourists, food provides the tourists with a novel experience and the chance to become more deeply involved in the local culture and traditions. Accordingly, because of the benefits of food tourism, it has also created interest among scholars to investigate in greater depth. However, even though the study of tourism is increasing, research issues and topics are still somewhat limited. At this stage, there is still a lack of research regarding the tourist’s traditional food consumption behaviour. In redressing this omission, this study examines consumer choice behaviour of traditional Taiwanese foods. The specific objectives of this study are to: firstly, explore the food choice behaviour in relation to traditional food; secondly, to examine the impact of personality traits on tourists’ traditional food choice behaviour. After a review of the literature, the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was selected to help explain tourists’ traditional food buying behaviour. This theory of TPB was used as it explained human’s behaviour from the perspective of the attitude-behaviour relationship and allows the researcher to conduct empirically based research. Furthermore, personality traits have been regarded as an important factor that influences people’s food choice behaviour. Therefore, in order to examine the influence of food tourism, two personality traits, food neophobia and sensation-seeking have been examined in this study. A quantitative research study design was adopted which was based on the postpostivism paradigm. A pilot survey was conducted in Australia involving 149 respondents to confirm the iii validity and reliability of the six scales used in the pilot study. As a result, the final questionnaire consisted of a total of 44 items in six different scales and two open-ended questions. The final survey was conducted using face-to-face interviews in Taiwan, with Caucasian tourists using a convenience sampling design. This resulted in 389 completed questionnaires. SPSS version 21 and AMOS version 21 were employed to analyse the numeric data and to test the hypotheses. Statistical techniques used with the pilot survey data included item analysis, reliability, and exploratory factor analysis. For the final survey, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also used to examine the effect of socio-demographic variables while structural equation modelling was used in conjunction with a confirmatory factor analysis, as well as inferential and moderating effect analyses. Findings from this study revealed that the Theory of Planned Behaviour provided feasible explanations for traditional food consumption behaviour of tourists. In other words, attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control all significantly contributed to the prediction of purchase intention of traditional Taiwanese food. This study also found that the personality trait of food neophobia had a significant negative relationship with traditional food purchase intention. However, it is interesting to note that the sensation seeking personality trait did not appear to be significant. This study also examined the moderating effect of food neophobia and the sensation seeking personality trait using the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Results found that food neophobia was a moderator of the relationship between attitude-purchase intention and subjective norm-purchase intention. However, sensation seeking was neither a predictor nor a moderator of the intention to purchase traditional foods. Results from the open-ended questions found that the major reasons to purchase traditional Taiwanese food was associated with “new experiences”, “good reputation”, “affordable price”, and “cultural exchange”. The reasons for not trying traditional Taiwanese food was ascribed to “unfamiliar ingredients”, “food poisoning”, “unsanitary environment”, and “language barrier”. This study provided evidence that one of the effective ways to understand tourists’ traditional food buying behaviour is from the perspectives of both attitude-behaviour relationships and personality.