Abstract
This article explores the role of national culture in the culinary consumption behavior of international tourists and the moderating influence of different types of travel companions. Study 1 adopted a text-mining, topical modeling approach to process useful reviews (n = 7,803) posted at TripAdvisor by users from 86 countries. Study 2 develops and tests a conceptual model of the relationships between national culture and culinary choices including culinary types and range of culinary choices, based on a secondary dataset of large-scale surveys from the tourism authority of the destination containing 9,141 responses by tourists from over 60 countries or regions. The results reveal that both Uncertainty Avoidance and Individualism-Collectivism have significant effects on tourist food consumption categories and the range of culinary choices. The study also evaluated the role of the moderating effect of travel companions, and results supported the significant relationship on the range of culinary choices when the tourists were accompanied by different types of travel companions.
Highlights
In Study 2, we proposed several hypotheses related to the relationships among national culture, culinary consumption, and travel companions
H7 was hypothesized that the presence of socially more distant travel companions significantly moderates the relationship between collectivism and the range of culinary consumption (M4-1, β = –0.110, p < 0.01), and H7 was supported
Two empirical studies with different types of data and methods show the cross-cultural differences of tourist culinary experiences and behaviors at Osaka, based on Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) and IDV
Summary
Food is considered an essential part of a culture and the food preferences of tourists are shaped by their cultural background (Jia, 2020; Kim and Huang, 2021). Tourism scholars have generated valuable insights into national culture and tourist experiences (Seo et al, 2012; Li and Katsumata, 2020), by drawing on the framework of cultural dimensions by Hofstede (1980). Most studies are limited to comparing tourists from two or three cultures based on relatively small samples and those based on the framework of Hofstede often focus on a single dimension of the framework (Jia, 2020). The Japanese culture emphasizes experiencing a variety of authentic cuisines closely related to a destination, Japan promotes its tourism industry by marketing specialty seasonal food products known as Meibutsu. Regarding Japanese cuisines, according to Japanese tourism authorities and previous studies (Kim, 2015; Kim and Ellis, 2015; Japan National Tourism Organization, 2020; Osaka Convention and Tourism Bureau, 2020), Japanese daily cuisines including Japanese noodle, Takoyaki, Okonomiyaki, Kushikatsu, Yakitori, Izakaya food, and Bento
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