Relationship between Consumer Motivation and the Gastronomic Experience of Olive Oil Tourism in Spain

Abstract

The rise of new tourist typologies as a result of the change in the motivations of tourists and the increasingly active awareness of the environment are making these new tourist activities more sustainable. The development of typologies such as oleotourism or, more globally, gastronomic tourism is formed as an engine of socio-economic development wherever it is inserted, being even more important and decisive if it develops in rural areas. This study is based on a model of structural equations based on minimum partial squares. A sample size of 414 surveys was used, all of which were collected in the oil mills and museums of the towns of Baena, Cabra, Luque and Montilla, all of which belong to the province of Córdoba, Spain. This study develops a model based on motivations and gastronomic experience resulting from the development of oleotourism in the rural areas of the province of Córdoba (Spain). Among the most noteworthy results it is worth highlighting the positive influence of motivations on the gastronomic experience of tourists. In addition, the predictive relevance of the model is demonstrated.

Segmenting Olive Oil Consumers Based on Consumption and Preferences toward Extrinsic, Intrinsic and Sensorial Attributes of Olive Oil

“…Since consumption of olive oil was not a part of their daily diet and was not a habit, and because UK consumers did not follow a Mediterranean diet, the efforts of marketing olive oil should be much stronger than in the Mediterranean countries with traditional and culturally established habits of consumption. Therefore, new concepts of knowledge transfer about olive oils should be introduced, e.g., introducing the value of "terroir" (similarly to wine [32]), transferring scientific knowledge to the open public, and increasing the "culture of olive oil and promoting producers and oleo tourism through the tourism system" [33].…”

Factors that characterize oleotourists in the province of Córdoba

“…Many studies focus on what motivates gastronomic tourists [14][15][16][17], as well as on gastronomy by country, e.g., France [18,19], Italy [20], Portugal [21,22], Croatia [23,24] and Spain [25][26][27], or by products, e.g., wine [27][28][29][30][31][32], cheese [33][34][35], and Iberian ham [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]; however, there are fewer analyses of tourist offers [37][38][39] or demand forecasts [40][41][42][43]. In the case of oil, research on olive oil stands out.…”

Restaurant management and food waste reduction: factors affecting attitudes and intentions in restaurants of Spain

“…For example, Wang et al (2018) and Nicolau et al (2020) have showcased the willingness of Generation Y customers to more actively recommend and pay a premium for “green” restaurants, respectively. This argument holds true for Spain: for example, Moral-Cuadra et al (2020) have pinpointed growing interest among the Spanish in the sustainability attributes of food consumption away from home while Elghannam et al (2020) have revealed positive consumer attitudes to shorter, and therefore, more environmentally-benign food supply chains in Spain.…”