An Empirical Investigation of Tourists’ Consumption of Local Food in Rural Tourism

Abstract

Food's role in tourism is multifaceted and complex. Food is not only essential to the body but is also integral to the experience; moreover, it is elusively embedded within society, culture, politics, institutions, and economy. Although food's complexity is conceptually explored within tourism studies, empirical investigations into the consumption of food are few and far between. In this study, we contribute an empirical analysis that employs both quantitative and qualitative data from fieldwork in a rural Norwegian region where there have been sustained efforts to develop and integrate “local food” and rural tourism. Three research questions are investigated: to what extent is “local food” consumed by tourists? What factors affect tourists' consumption of local food? For tourists interested in local food, what purpose does the consumption of “local food” serve? We find that only a minority of rural tourism's tourists have a special interest in food. Nonetheless, for those who possess this interest, we find that local food plays an important role to their tourist experiences. Furthermore, the study suggests that local food is a means employed by parents to educate their children in the ways of “the rural idyll”.

Key Words:

• Rural tourism
• Norway
• food
• local food
• consumption

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Professor Nina Gunnerud Berg, Professor Karoline Daugstad, and the three anonymous referees for their critical reading and constructive feedback; along with research assistants Sigrid Rieber and Kirsti Indrebø for their assistance in deploying the survey, and Dr Keith Halfacree, for valuable comments when an early work-in-progress version of this work was presented at the International Amenity Migration and Seasonal Homes Workshop in Trondheim.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The research is funded by The Research Council of Norway [grant number 179477/I30]. The funding source has had no active part in the research.

Notes

1. Response categories were to a large extent, to some extent, to little or no extent, and not relevant. “Important reason” is the combined values of to a large extent and to some extent. The values of to a large extent are interpreted to mean “very important”.

2. We have checked the number of observations within each category of the dummy-coded predictors in Table 3, and there were no combinations with fewer than 30 cases. We have also checked the correlations between each independent variable to screen for multicollinearity, and we only found three bivariate combinations that had a correlation greater than 0.5. There was a correlation of 0.6 between “visited region before” and “knowledge of local food products”, a correlation of 0.7 between “visited region before” and “nationality”, and a correlation of 0.5 between “knowledge of local food products” and “nationality”. All these correlations are well known and expected, and we have considered this in our interpretations. See Appendix for a full correlation matrix.