Understanding the wine tourism experience: The roles of facilitators, constraints, and involvement

Understanding the wine tourism experience is indispensable to the development of a wine tourism destination. This study tested an integrated model to obtain a better understanding of the wine tourism experience. The proposed model included both perceived wine tourism facilitators and constraints to examine their effects on wine tourism experience and tested the moderating role of involvement in these effects. Using Chinese outbound wine tourists in Australia as the study sample, this study identified that winery fame, interpersonal facilitators, and local attractions are three facilitating factors, while personal language and transportation barriers and time and information barriers were the perceived constraining factors. Both interpersonal facilitators and local attractions positively affected wine tourism experience; however, winery fame negatively influenced wine tourism experience. The study found that involvement moderated the effects of facilitators/constraints on wine tourism experience. For high-involvement wine tourists, the effect of local attractions is pronounced, while interpersonal facilitator negatively influences their wine tourism experience. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.