Gastro-nostalgia: towards a higher order measurement scale based on two gastro festivals

ABSTRACT

Recently nostalgia has received attention from academic researchers for increasing destination attractiveness and tourist footfalls. Despite increasing interests in food tourism, little research exists regarding gastro-nostalgia to motivate tourists for visiting gastro-festivals. The current study identifies six potential dimensions of gastro-nostalgia through extant literature review viz., cuisine, gastro-experience, gastro-festive ambiance, socialization, personal identity, and cultural identity. Furthermore, it developed a robust instrument for measuring gastro-nostalgia as a reflective-reflective second-order construct using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The study collected perceptual responses from tourists and individuals having positive memories associated with two prime gastro-festivals in India: (a) Durga puja (221 responses) and (b) Onam (257 responses). The instrument is empirically validated through factorial validity, nomological validity, and measurement invariance. The study showed that gastro-nostalgia could positively influence tourists’ willingness to recommend intentions and revisit intentions. The study offers several implications for destination managers and event managers.

KEYWORDS:

• Nostalgia
• gastronomy
• food
• festivals
• tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Santanu Mandal

Santanu Mandal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Operations and Systems, Amrita School of Business, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India. He has been a visiting scholar at Spear School of Business, Oklahoma State University, USA. He has published in several reputed journals and has served as adhoc reviewer for many reputed journals. His research interests primarily lie in services operations, technology management, big data analytics and customer relationship management.

Sangeetha Gunasekar

Sangeetha Gunasekar is an Associate Professor in Finance at Amrita School of Business, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India. Her present research interests include text analytics, online reviews and tourism in India.

Saurabh Kumar Dixit

Saurabh Kumar Dixit, PhD, is an Associate Professor and founding Head of the Department of Tourism and Hotel Management, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong (Meghalaya), India. His research interests include Consumer Behavior, Gastronomic Tourism, and Experiential Management and Marketing. He has so far edited fifteen books that deals with Consumer Behavior, Gastronomic Tourism, Management and Marketing. Presently he is editing Handbooks of Luxury Management and Wine Tourism. He is an editorial board member of various International journals and guest edited special issues for many journals.

Payel Das

Payel Das is an Assistant Professor in Mass Communication, at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India. She has completed her Masters in Mass Communication and Doctorate from the Department of Mass Communication, Assam University Silchar, Assam. She has been a Post-Doctoral Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. She has an MBA in Marketing from ICFAI, Sikkim. Her research areas are new media studies, branding, tourism, corporate social responsibility, public relations, media culture and society; and gender studies.