Perceived Risk and Food Tourism: Pursuing Sustainable Food Tourism Experiences

While food can function as a component product of tourism, there remains a need for food tourism to become more sustainable. This study sought to discover what risk dimensions tourists perceive in food tourism and to enhance understanding of what actions and coping behaviors tourists take to lower levels of perceived risk in a food tourism setting. Data were collected in March 2023 for two weeks from Chinese tourists who considered traveling to Jeju Island, South Korea. A total of 303 responses were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling to test 13 hypotheses. Results identified physical risk, communication risk, and food-related risk as concerns for tourists, and the results confirmed support for 11 of the hypotheses tested. This study has theoretical implications for supplementing insufficient prior research by examining the risk factors perceived by tourists when participating in food tourism. Practical implications from this study include ways to reduce the level of perceived risk dimensions for sustainable food tourism experiences.