The Pilgrim Consumer Behaviour along the Way of St. James

Abstract

The purpose of this study is contributing to increase the knowledge about Pilgrim’s behaviour during their journey. It focuses mainly on food consumption expenses and habits. The study aims to describe the behavior of pilgrims along the Santiago route.
 A cross-sectional quantitative study was performed to achieve our objectives. 225 pilgrims fulfilled a survey to characterise their profile and their consumption pattern during the pilgrimage.
 Our results showed that most of the pilgrims describe themselves as tourist or mystical and transcendental. The pilgrimage lasts 13 days performing 23,6 kilometers for 6,5 hours per day. Regarding differences in the amount of money spent according to the pilgrim profile or the pilgrimage we only observe significant differences for the tourist profile intending to spend more money per day. In the same way, pilgrims performing less than 6 hours of walking per day intend to spend more money.
 In conclusion, it seems that the Saint James Way seems to attract more people to the local community increasing their availability to spend money locally