What is the Role of Demographics in Tourists' Attitudes Towards Foods?

Abstract

This study examines the demographic factors affecting food involvement and food awareness of tourists. Data were collected from potential Chinese tourists (n = 580) via questionnaire using a purposive sampling strategy and analyzed with a t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results showed that gen-der had a significant effect on food involvement: female respondents had a higher tendency to become culinary tourists and had higher food involvement than male respondents. Education also proved to be an important determinant, though surprisingly those participants of lower education had higher levels of food awareness than those of higher education. Our findings revealed that even demographic factors (age, gender, and education) heavily influenced interac-tions with ethnic and local foods and food consumption. This study offers some theoretical and practical implications for foodservice business and DMOs where culinary resources are heavily linked to tourism activities.

The Role of Demographics and Previous Experience in Tourists’ Experiential Perceptions

“…The educational level may determine tourists' behavior in specific tourism experiences and be associated with other factors. For example, Okumus et al [27] confirmed that tourists with a higher level of education were more willing to participate in culinary tourism experiences compared to visitors with a basic level of education.…”

“…Zhao et al [26] examined the perceptions of homestay guests and found that gender, age, and educational level influenced the perceived value of the experience at the functional, emotional, and social levels. Okumus et al [27], in the context of food tourism, found that age, gender, and education level strongly influenced food awareness and involvement in culinary experiences.…”

“…In this regard, previous studies have proposed that the demographic factors of age, gender, and education have an impact on tourists' perceptions, intentions, and attitudes toward the experiential consumption of a product or service and their behavioral outcomes [23][24][25][26]. Even though these studies have provided relevant empirical evidence about the influence of these factors on marketing variables, more information is still needed to predict tourists' behavior in the current experiential tourism context [27].…”

A complexity perspective for antecedents of support for tourism development

“…As mentioned earlier, residents' negative tourism perceptions reduce support for tourism development (García et al , 2015; Lankford and Howard, 1994). However, to understand local tourism support in more detail, demographic factors can be functional in understanding behavioral trends (Mattson and Ruther, 2012; Okumus et al , 2021), attitudes (Marafa and Tung, 2004) and social embeddedness (Bowker, 1983). At this point, it is useful to better understand residents' perceptions of tourism impacts and their attitudes toward tourism support while examining demographic factors in this context.…”