Local food consumption, positive emotions and the intention to revisit of tourists in Amsterdam
During the first phase, I'm following the course called Context Related Research. The purpose of the course is to understand a variety of research approaches and learn to use them by practicing specific methods. Based on philosophy of how knowledge is created, I will learn a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods, in order to make research a daily practice with which I can handle complex issues from an investigative perspective. After participant observation in Amsterdam, I started my research about the relation between local food consumption, positive emotions and the intention to revisit of tourists in Amsterdam. In this blog you will find the literature review about these three concepts.
Introduction
Local food is an important concept in tourism, since every destination is characterised by its traditional food culture (Björk & Kauppinen, 2016). The local food specialities, which are prepared from local ingredients, form a part of the local’s traditional culture and history (Björk & Kauppinen, 2016) and reflect the unique culture of a tourist destination by providing tourists with unforgettable experiences (Tsai, 2016). The demands of tourists regarding local food have different levels of intensity. Some tourists prefer only familiar food when travelling, for other tourists, local food is an addiction to their cultural experiences, and certain tourists travel exclusively for a destination’s gastronomy (Sengel et al., 2015). Nevertheless, even though not all travellers search for culinary-gastronomic experiences during their trip, each traveller is most likely exposed to the influence of food and food experiences (Björk & Kauppinen-Räisänen, 2016). Although tourists travel particularly to destinations which are known for their fine foods, such as France and Italy, local food is not the main reason for most people to travel to Amsterdam. However, it can be assumed that the local food affects the experience as well as the emotions and behavioural intentions of tourists visiting Amsterdam. Hence, this literature review investigates the relation between local food, positive emotions and intentions to revisit and is specifically focussing on these concepts in the context of tourists in Amsterdam. Therefore, the main question of the research is ‘What is the relation between local food consumption, positive emotions and the revisit intentions of tourists in Amsterdam?’. The purpose of the research is to provide a valuable insight of the influence of local food on the tourists’ emotions and behaviour, which can be relevant for Destinations Management Organisations (DMO’s).
Literature review
The definition of local foods often depends on the distance from the production site to the consumption area, or is defined as the food made by the local people, including relatives, friends, and neighbours (Kohsaka, Matsuoka, & Uchiyama, 2016). The role of local food in the tourist’s experience, especially the authentic aspect of local food, is discussed in various studies. According to Sims (2009), local food can play an important role in the sustainable tourism experience, because it connects consumers to the region and its perceived culture and heritage, and it satisfies the tourist’s desire for authenticity within the holiday experience. Son and Honggang (2013) confirm this by mentioning that food related activities can be an essential tourism attraction for international tourists seeking authentic and learning experiences. Moreover, for many independent travellers, eating unfamiliar food is an important and stimulating part of their trip (Falconer, 2013), where unfamiliar food names and ingredients enrich tourist’s perceptions of authenticity and induce positive emotions (Kim, Youn & Rao, 2016). Among these articles, it can be concluded that consuming local food create authentic tourist experiences which induce positive emotions. However, there are many definitions of emotions. Rosenberg (1998) states that “emotions are acute, intense, and typically brief psychophysiological changes that result from a response to a meaningful situation in one’s environment”. According to Cohn and Fredrickson (2011), positive emotions are pleasant or desirable situational responses, ranging from interest and contentment to love and joy. Positive emotions of tourists can be categorized into different dimensions, for example satisfied, happy, pleased, joyful, delighted, entertained, cheerful, enthusiastic, active and surprised (Bigne & Andreu, 2004). In their study, Hosany and Gilber (2010) identified three dimensions of positive emotions for hedonic destinations, namely, joy, love and positive surprise, after which they categorized these emotions into four dimensions in the setting of a full-service restaurant, namely excitement, comfort, annoyance and romance. Their study states that the measurement of positive emotions should be context specific, since the typology of positive emotions is subject to different tourism contexts. Nevertheless, several studies show that tourists’ positive emotions caused by local food consumption lead to behavioural intentions. Behavioural intentions are defined as a person’s perceived likelihood or “subjective probability that he or she will engage in a given behaviour” (Committee on Communication for Behavior Change in the 21st Century, 2002, p.31). Concerning the behavioural intentions of tourists, several studies found that these are the tourists’ intentions to revisit the destination and their willingness to recommend the destination to others (Kim & Brown, 2012; Eusebio & Vieira, 2013). In general, the concept of behavioural intentions is considered to include the intention to revisit and word-of-mouth intentions that can predict future consumption behaviours of customers (Prayag, Khoo-Lattimore, & Sitruk, 2015). This research however, focusses specifically on the tourists’ revisit intentions. According to Jang and Ha (2015) emotions connected with authenticity lead to better perceptions of dining value and more favourable behavioural intentions, such as the intention to revisit. Also, food quality, service quality and restaurant atmospherics can generate positive emotions, which subsequently influence behavioural intentions including revisit intentions (Prayag, Khoo-Lattimore, & Sitruk, 2015). Furthermore, recent studies show that positive emotions as a result of local food consumption, induce positive memories that lead to revisit intentions. The study of Sthapit, Björk, & Coudounaris (2017) reveals that tourist’s local food consumption leads to emotional responses that produce memories of the trip experience, which have a positive effect on the tourist’s intention to revisit, willingness to recommend, and intention to provide positive word-of-mouth. Moreover, Tsai (2016) states that “the experiences of consuming local cuisines enable tourists to create positive and unforgettable memories, and such positive memories further enhance their identification with or strong attachment to local attractions and behavioural intentions” (Tsai, 2016 p.536). This statement indicates that the tourists’ memory of previous experiences affects their decisions on revisiting a tourist destination in the future.
Above mentioned studies have researched the relation between local food consumption, positive emotions and the intentions to revisit. The studies show that local food consumption create authentic tourist experiences and result in positive emotions. Consequently, these positive emotions induce positive memories of the experience, which lead to behavioural intentions, such as the intention to revisit. However, further research is needed to determine whether these findings can be generalized. First, several studies had relatively small sample sizes, which makes it hard to generalize the results globally. Second, the research scope of the studies was limited to specific destinations and regions, e.g. Rovaniemi, Finland (Sthapit, Björk, & Coudounaris, 2017) and Southern Taiwan (Tsai, 2016). Third, several studies took place in one environment, e.g. only in restaurants (Jang & Ha, 2015; Kim, Youn, & Rao, 2016). Fourth, the methodology was different in the studies, e.g. only applying quantitative methodology (Tsai, 2016). Therefore, this research will focus specifically on tourists in Amsterdam in order to investigate the relation between these tourists’ local food consumption, positive emotions and intentions to revisit.
