Willingness to eat ethnic foods and food experience: a study on Khasi Food

Abstract

PurposeThe present study analyses Khasi Food as an ethnic food to be promoted as a tourism product encouraging tourists to visit Meghalaya, India. The food tourists are primarily motivated to eat Khasi Food to provide authentic ethnic food experiences. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is to explore the willingness of tourists to eat ethnic foods and the consequent ethnic Khasi Food Experience (KFE).Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts a convergent triangulation approach. Statistical data analysis and thematic analysis were incorporated, and the combined results were compared to see if they converged to achieve the same objective or purpose, which is willingness to eat ethnic foods that influences KFE in the study area (selected villages in East Khasi Hills District and West Jaiñtia Hills District).FindingsThe converged findings from statistical analysis and thematic analysis indicate that tourists who visited the study area were willing to eat ethnic foods, which is Khasi Food and their willingness to do so has a positive influence on KFE.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is original and the first of its kind because this study has not been conducted yet in the state of Meghalaya, India. This paper has an authentic value of projecting Khasi Food globally as a cultural and ethnic tourism product giving meaningful experiences to tourists and locals alike.

Food tourism research in India – current trends and future scope

“…The last group examined tourists’ perception, satisfaction and revisit behaviors in relation to various constructs like street food, ethnic food, restaurant ambience, food quality, service quality, food image, food festivals, food neophobia and memorable experiences (Chatterjee and Suklabaidya, 2021; Kala, 2020; Khanna et al , 2022; Mawroh and Dixit, 2023; Payini et al , 2020; Piramanayagam et al , 2020; Zargar and Farmanesh, 2021). Religion, nationality and culture also influence consumer behavior in food tourism (Mekoth and Thomson, 2018).…”

“…Hence, the number of studies in India has been limited compared to those outside India. Food tourism research in India has been carried out under various themes, emerging role of food tourism (Chand et al , 2007; Sabari Shankar, 2022), foreign tourists’ culinary preferences (Updhyay and Sharma, 2014), using food tourism to market destinations (Abraham and Kannan, 2015; Kumar and Singh Rana, 2016; Mehul Krishna Kumar, 2019; Pal, 2020; Rana et al , 2018; Sahoo, 2020), importance of food tourism (Mohanty et al , 2020; Mohapatra, 2017), street foods and tourists experiences (Gupta et al , 2019a; Gupta et al , 2019b; Gupta and Sajnani, 2019; Khanna et al , 2022), sustainability using street foods (Panicker and Priya, 2021), food image and local cuisine (Chatterjee and Suklabaidya, 2021; Gupta et al , 2020), food culture and tourism (Mekoth and Thomson, 2018; Mohanty et al , 2020), slow food and tourism development (Ahlawat et al , 2019), food neophobia and food event revisit intentions (Payini et al , 2020), food tour experiences of tourists (Kaushal and Yadav, 2020), local food consumption experiences of tourists (Mawroh and Dixit, 2023; Piramanayagam et al , 2020), satisfaction and loyalty among local food festival visitors (Zargar and Farmanesh, 2021), measuring gastro-nostalgia among food festival visitors (Mandal et al , 2022) and development of a foodie scale (Setia et al , 2022).…”

Examining tourists’ intentions to participate in tea tourism. An emerging market context

“…The study explores tourists' intentions to visit a tea tourism destination using S-O-R theory as the underlying framework. Local cuisine and beverages play a significant role in co-creating enduring travel experiences (Mawroh & Dixit, 2022;Uehara & Assarut, 2020). Contemporary tourists allocate a substantial portion of their travel budgets to expenses related to food and beverages (Vodeb & Rudež, 2017).…”

Exploring dark kitchens in Brazilian urban centres: A study of delivery-only restaurants with food delivery apps

“…Ethnic foods have greater added value and may require greater investment and skilled culinary staff (Farrer, 2020;Wessendorf & Farrer, 2021). The ethnic heritage food may face some risk factors such as 'adaptation to customer preference', 'costs of ingredients', and 'non-native origin of chef' (Almansouri et al, 2022;Arsil et al, 2022;Mawroh & Dixit, 2023). Most of the ethnic restaurants were composed of Japanese restaurants representing 5.5% of all restaurants.…”