The Influence of Agritourism Experiences on Consumer Behavior toward Local Food

Abstract

Agritourism—visiting a working farm for education or recreation—may serve as a tool to increase local food consumption as it often includes opportunities to purchase local food on-site. Yet, the influence of agritourism on consumers’ local food purchasing behavior remains underexplored. Thus, this study measures the impact of agritourism experiences on consumers’ intentions to purchase local food. To do so, visitors were surveyed at six agritourism farms with similar agritourism activities (e.g., U-pick, educational displays, and on-site market) located across North Carolina (USA) before (pre) and after (post) their visits ( n = 328). Data, collected during the 2018–2019 peak agritourism season, were analyzed using repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance. Findings indicate that agritourism experiences effectively increase consumers’ intentions to purchase local food. These findings advance the scholarship of agritourism. They also provide useful information to design effective marketing campaigns to promote the purchase and consumption of local food and strengthen local agricultural systems.

Demystifying Members’ Social Capital and Networks within an Agritourism Association: A Social Network Analysis

“…The high relational social capital in terms of members' willingness to help and share professional knowledge and information with other members shows that the association effectively helps to build social ties, which in turn fosters trust, reciprocity, and cooperation among members [27,29,31,32]. The high cognitive social capital among members, indicating strong levels of shared values, attitudes, and beliefs towards their association, can facilitate collective action [26,28], which in the case of agritourism is to increase customers' awareness of the local food systems and producers [5]. Lowest levels of structural social capital found indicate that further measures are needed to build social connections and relationships at the personal level among members [25,44].…”

“…The investigation of networks and use of SNA in tourism, although still novel and rare, has increased in recent years, either to examine overall networks within specific tourism activities (e.g., food tourism) or macro structures such as tourism governance and sustainable tourism [55,56]. Overall, the extant literature stresses the need of agritourism operators to establish and nurture social networks with customers as well as with other farmers to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and resources [5,9,56,57]. Developing social network ties within the community have a positive effect on microbusiness success of micro agritourism operations [53].…”

“…Many farmers throughout the world are offering a suite of recreational and educational activities to visitors, commonly referred as agritourism [1], seeking to increase their revenues and improve the overall economic value of their business [2,3]. The offer of agritourism remains growing, and it is expected to uphold this trend in the future given the increased interest of consumers to (re)connect with local producers and the need to close the rural-urban gap [4,5]. However, farmers' venture into agritourism is not an easy task as many do not have adequate entrepreneurial skills (e.g., product innovation mindset) or business competencies (e.g., direct marketing expertise) conducive to success [6].…”

A gap analysis of farm tourism microentrepreneurial mentoring needs in North Carolina, USA

“…Moreover, in a survey of 207 farms across North Carolina, Ferreira (2019) reported that the sales of farm experiences, tours, and stays to visitors were deemed at least very important by 45.4% of farmers, accounting for an estimated 14.4% of total farm income. Finally, agritourism offerings in the state may include a diverse set of educational, farm-based recreation, recreational self-harvest, hands-on, and other nonagricultural recreation (e.g., bounce castles, swings) activities (Brune, Knollenberg, Stevenson, Barbieri, & Schroeder-Moreno (2020).…”

Visitors and values: A qualitative analysis of agritourism operator motivations across the U.S.

“…In addition, renewed interest in food systems and local food has provided the opportunity for farmers to invite the general public to their farms, creating both educational and economic value (Chase & Gubinger, 2014;Martinez, 2010). More recent research suggests that agritourism supports local food systems and enhances direct-to-consumer sales not only by directly influencing tourists' purchasing behavior but also by more generally promoting a broader interest in agriculture (Brune et al, 2020).…”