Pixels to palates: Social media foodscape influence on e-Trust, experience and gastronomic intentions

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the dynamics between the aesthetic appeal and social factors of destination social media foodscapes, e-Trust, destination food experiences, and future experiential intentions among gastronomy tourists. Data were collected for this quantitative research design using purposive sampling. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was then employed to test the research hypotheses on 336 responses. The results illustrate that e-Trust and destination food experiences sequentially mediate the relationship between aesthetic appeal, social factors, and future experiential intentions. These findings should be interpreted with caution, as the effectiveness of social media in influencing food tourists may evolve and be subject to rapid changes. The study highlights the need for tourism stakeholders to strategically curate and create destination social media foodscapes to support tourists’ travel planning and consumption. The originality of this paper lies in its framework, which combines the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to better understand the psychological processes of food tourists, from the social media realms of foodscapes to physical consumption experiences through a sequential mediation perspective.