The impact of food neophobia and sensation seeking of foreign tourists on the purchase intention of traditional Turkish food

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effect of sensation seeking and food neophobia personality traits on the intention of foreign tourists to buy traditional Turkish food. The sample of the study, 500 foreign tourists who visited the Istanbul Historic Peninsula in the summer of 2018 were surveyed by easy sampling method. In the first phase 100 participants were asked to fill personal information form, food neophobia scale, brief sensation seeking scale and purchase intention scale. The obtained data were analyzed in SPSS program. After the pilot survey normality test, Cronbach's alpha coefficients and factor analysis were used to construct validity and reliability of food neophobia, brief sensation seeking scale and purchase intention scales. After ensuring the validity and reliability of statements in the survey form, 400 more survey forms were filled by participants to complete the major survey. After the data acquisition phase, regression analysis was used to evaluate the impact of food neophobia and sensation-seeking on purchase intention. The analysis showed that food neophobia has a considerably great impact on purchase intention. Results also showed that tourists with a low level of food neophobia show a high-level of purchase intention on Turkish traditional meals. On the SS side of the study it was found that experience-seeking is the only sub-scale of sensation-seeking that affects purchase intention. Consequently, experience seeking has a negative correlation with food neophobia. According to study results personality plays role in what people want to it. This information can be used to achieve more revenue and promote Turkish cuisine through tourism. Some suitable Turkish foods can be customized on the same line with major culinary cultures in the world for highly food neophobic tourists and also unique Turkish foods can be introduced to highly experience-seeker visitors.