“Exploring factors affecting tourists’ purchase intention of Wuhan cuisine”

Food has long been considered very important in tourism activities and it has a positive effect on tourist satisfaction. Then local cuisine has become an important attraction for tourist destinations and one of the focuses of destination marketing. This study is based on the theory of perceived value, perceived risk theory, and the theory of planned behavior, aiming to understand tourists’ intentions to purchase local cuisine and its influencing factors, choosing Wuhan, China as the study case, and conducting an empirical survey on tourists visiting Wuhan in 2023. Data analysis was conducted using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses. The results show that the value of quality, price, emotion, cognition, culture and health can improve tourists’ satisfaction and enhance tourists’ purchase intention of Wuhan cuisine. However, social value and perceived risk have no significant effect on satisfaction and purchase intention, tourists’ satisfaction with Wuhan cuisine positively affects tourists’ attitude, and tourists’ satisfaction. Attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control are also key factors to predict tourists’ purchase intention of Wuhan cuisine. The purchase intention model meets the fitting criteria: X²/ Df = 1.533, RMSEA = 0.025, CFI = 0.977, IFI = 0.977. The results of this study provide a reference for the competent government departments and related enterprises to promote the development of food tourism in Wuhan.


INTRODUCTION
As the tourism industry flourishes and travel opportunities expand, tourists increasingly seek high-quality experiences beyond mere sightseeing.This has led to a rise in experiential tourism, including food tourism, cultural tourism, and festival tourism.Food, considered one of the six essential elements of tourism, has always played a pivotal role in travel activities (Zeng et al., 2023).It typically constitutes 30% or more of tourism expenditures (Tovmasyan, 2019).In leisure and experiential tourism, local cuisine significantly contributes to tourists' satisfaction, providing not only physical nourishment, but also social and emotional fulfillment, meaning, and enjoyment (Zeng et al., 2019).
For tourists, local cuisine has become an important consideration in their tourism decision-making process (Knollenberg et al., 2021).A survey report by the Food Tourism Research Group of the China Academy of Tourism shows that 92.3% of the respondents will do local cuisine strategies before or during the travel; 93.1% of the respondents took local cuisine experience as one of the main factors for traveling to other places; 76.8% of the respondents who travel for business will squeeze time out of business to find local cuisine (Dai Bin, 2023).Moreover, local cuisine has become a central fo-cus in destination marketing, acting as a critical attraction that shapes tourists' travel plans.An increasing number of cities are now actively showcasing and promoting local cuisine offerings via official channels to ignite the travel enthusiasm of tourists (Yang et al., 2018).
As a national center city, Wuhan shoulders an important strategic mission of the country (Zeng et al., 2023).According to the data of Wuhan Bureau of Statistics, from 2018 to 2022, the tourists to Wuhan reached an annual average of 268.562 million, and the number of tourists received in 2019 was ranked as the top of the sub-provincial cities. Wuhan's cuisine is varied, with elaborate ingredients and production techniques, focusing on nutrition and flavor, and a perfect blend of cooking techniques that preserve tradition and innovation.Wuhan's 'morning culture' is famous throughout the country, and Hong Kong gourmet Mr Alan Choi called Wuhan the 'breakfast capital' in 'A Bite of China 2'.Due to its dockside culture, the fast pace and richness of breakfast is an important reason for the emergence and formation of Wuhan's 'early morning culture'.Wuhan has a wide variety of breakfasts, among which Wuhan Hot-Dry Noodles with Sesame Paste is most famous.It's also one of 'the Five Most Famous Noodles' in China (Wang, 2017).At the "2023 China Culinary Tourism Development Forum", Wuhan was awarded the title of 'Ten Cities' in the 'Mass Tourism -Gourmet Series'.Against this backdrop, this study aims to delve into tourists' consumption intentions regarding Wuhan cuisine by examining their perceived value of Wuhan cuisine and its influence on purchase intentions.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES
As early as the 16 th -17 th centuries with the expansion of global trade, and savoring exotic cuisines became a driving force for exploration and adventure (Okumus, 2020).The relationship between local cuisine and tourism has been explored by scholars since 1983 (Bélisle, 1983).Tourists will create unforgettable memories by experiencing the local cuisine, which can enhance their identity with the tourist destination (Tsai, 2016) There is also a section of scholars who relate the concept to national or regional boundaries and, in some cases, to traditional or protected geographical indications of the region or traditional cuisine of a particular region (Feagan, 2007;Akaichi et al., 2012).Šánová et al. (2017) argue that foods purchased from a farmers' market and labeled as regional or national foods are also protected geographical indications and carry the name of origin and traditional characteristics.
By sorting out the literature on behavioral intention and food tourism, it is found that scholars generally agree that perceived value and perceived risk can have an impact on tourists' purchase intention.At the same time, tourists' purchase intention can be influenced by other factors, such as satisfaction and attitude.
Value is regarded as important in the field of economics, where it is theoretically based on exchange theory, labor theory of value, and utility theory, as well as theories related to accounting, finance and marketing, while it is also rooted in psychology and social psychology (Kim et al., 2009).
Scholars use the perceived value theory to predict consumer buying behavior and it explains consumer buying decisions and preferences well.
Customer's perceived value and purchase intentions are moving in the same direction, that is, if the customer's perceived value of a product is higher, then the customer will have a higher willingness to buy the product (Zeithaml, 1988;Wu et al., 2022).Because of its importance in market competition, it has been a hot issue in marketing and management research.
Through literature collation, it is found that scholars have adopted various multi-dimensional perceived value definitions and studies for their areas of research.Perceived value is first and foremost a subjective feeling of the consumer, which is generated through the comparison of gains and losses (Zeithaml, 1988), he sees perceived value as a single dimension.This notion of his has also been accepted and adopted by many scholars.Similarly, Zhao and Chen (2021) consider perceived value as a single dimension.However, more scholars have argued that perceived value can be multidimensional, based on their respective fields of study.Consumers are influenced by many factors other than perceived value when shopping, and perceived risk is one of them.The likelihood of a bad aspect of a future event occurring is often referred to as risk.Risk is the likelihood that a certain loss will occur under certain circumstances (Dowling & Staelin, 1994).Individual perceived risk in psychology inspired the concept of perceived risk.According to Dowling and Staelin (1994), perceived risk is the combination of subjective feelings of discomfort, worry, uncertainty, or apprehension that consumers experience after a purchase is completed.Variables affecting perceived risk include the attributes of a particular product, the likelihood of a negative outcome from the purchase, the shopping environment, the target and the channel of purchase.
Food is also a product of trust (Dai et al., 2023).Consumers may also fail to recognize relevant safety information when purchasing and consuming a food product (McCluskey, 2000).Perceived risk is is created when consumers are afraid of making a wrong decision.Choi et al. (2015) argued that consumers choose to avoid certain recognized risks by choosing certain foods when purchasing food.The studies by Chen and Chang (2012) and Jin et al. (2016) showed that perceived risk has a negative impact on satisfaction and purchase intentions.
In consumer behavior research, perceived risk is an important research variable.Bauer (1960) brought this concept to the field of consumption and argued that consumers cannot predict the outcome of their consumption and, it is possible that some of the outcomes are unsatisfactory to the consumer.Therefore, consumption is, in fact, a form of risk-taking, and that risk is a subjective feeling of the individual (Bauer, 1960).Theory of perceived risk assumes that consumers tend to minimize perceived risk rather than maximize expected return (Mitchell, 1999).Some scholars have also focused on the relationship between perceived value, perceived risk and behavioral decisions, suggesting that perceived risk plays a moderating role (Kwok et al., 2015).In the study of predicting behavioral intentions, most scholars use the theory of planned behavior.
According to the theory, the more positive the behavioral attitude and the more positive the subjective norm, the more positive the behavioral intention of the individual.If the behavioral attitude and subjective norm are positive, the stronger the perceived behavioral control, the stronger the behavioral intention of the individual will be (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980).Scholars have used the theory to study the behavioral intentions of people with various characteristics (Novo-Corti, 2010; Lee et al., 2018).
This study attempts to build a research model of tourists' purchase intention of Wuhan cuisine and find out the factors.
For the purpose of the above research, according to the literature, based on the perceived value theory, the perceived risk theory and the theory of planned behavior, at the same time, considering the impact of satisfaction on attitude (Oliver, 1980), the proposed research hypotheses are as follows: H1a: Quality value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects satisfaction.In summary, the research hypotheses are presented in Figure 1.

METHODOLOGY
This study adopts quantitative research as the main research method, draws a large number of samples from tourists who travel to Wuhan, and the main tool used is questionnaire survey.
This questionnaire used a five-point Likert scale, which corresponds from low to high to the respondent's level of agreement with the statement of the question item, with 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree.The questionnaire includes the following contents: (1) demographic characteristics and basic information; (2) the tourists' perceived value of Wuhan cuisine; (3) the perceived risk of tourists towards Wuhan cuisine; (4) the tourists' consumption intentions towards Wuhan cuisine and its influencing factors.
In this study, descriptive statistics were used to analyze the characteristics and travel preferences of tourists in Wuhan, and Cronbach's alpha was used to measure the questionnaire variables and test for consistency.In terms of hypothesis testing, validated factor analysis of the methods and structural equation modeling were used.
Since the respondents of this study are tourists visiting Wuhan, according to the ranking of Wuhan attractions on Ctrip.com, the top three popular attractions are Wuhan Yellow Crane Tower Park, Wuhan East Lake Eco-tourism Scenic Area, and Hubei Provincial Museum, so these three popular scenic spots were selected to conduct a questionnaire survey from September 20 to October 10, 2023, with a total of 900 questionnaires distributed and 826 recovered with a validity rate of 91.7%.According to the results of the survey, as shown in Table 1, there were 396 male respondents and 430 female respondents.The age of the respondents is concentrated in the two parts of the 26-40 years old and the 41-55 years old, 334 and 309, respectively, which accounted for a total of 77.8% of the respondents.Most of the interviewees are company employees, 342, accounted for 41.4% of the total, respondents are mostly concentrated in the university (junior college, undergraduate), the proportion is as high as 42.5%, and 314 respondents have a monthly income in the range of 5,001-8,000, the proportion reaches 38%.This survey involves respondents with various characteristics, so this questionnaire has a certain degree of randomness, but also has a certain degree of representativeness, content validity, and reliability.
Secondly, the travel preferences of the respondents of the 826 samples were understood and analyzed, which mainly included source of tourists, purpose of travel, residence time in Wuhan, annual frequency of travel, travel expenditure and proportion of food consumption.

RESULTS
Before evaluating the model, the questionnaire was analyzed for reliability and validity.The overall questionnaire, with a total of 44 measures, had a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.901, and the questionnaire used in this study had good reliability.The KMO test value of the survey data is 0.884.The result of Bartlett's sphericity test shows that the approximate chi-square is 29575.012,which is a relatively large value, and the significance probability is 0.000, and it is considered that the validity of the scale is well-structured, and it is appropriate to do the factor analysis.
Factor analysis was conducted on the results of the questionnaire, and a total of 13 factors and 52 indicators were extracted, explaining 76.954% of the total variance of the original variables, which makes the results of factor analysis more satisfactory.Meanwhile, the factor loadings of 52 measurement items are all above 0.50 and there is no multiple loading, which indicates a good correspondence between the measurement items and dimensions, and the structural validity of this questionnaire is more satisfactory.
Collating the statistical results of the factor loadings, all the indicators are well up to the standard of the latent variables to which they belong, and the AVE of each variable ranges from to 0.76, which is greater than 0.5, and the CR ranges from 0.849-0.939,thus showing the convergent validity.Structural equation modeling is a combination of several statistical analysis methods used to test the relationship between latent, explicit, interfering or error variables included in the model, both for analysis and for measurement.The fitting results of verification factor analysis are as follows: X²/Df = 1.533,RMSEA = 0.025, CFI = 0.977, IFI = 0.938.Based on the above, the model fit meets the requirements.
According to Table 4, quality value, price value, emotional value, cognitive value, cultural value and health value show a significant positive impact relationship on tourist satisfaction and tourist purchase intention, the hypothesis is valid; tourist satisfaction positively affects tourist attitude; subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, tourist satisfaction and tourist attitude present a significant positive influence relationship on purchase intentions, the hypothesis holds.Both variables, social value and perceived risk, did not show a significant impact on both tourist satisfaction and tourists' purchase intention, therefore, the hypothesis is not valid.

DISCUSSION
Based on the perceived value theory, perceived risk theory, rational behavior theory, planned behavior theory, and social exchange theory, this paper constructs a model of tourists' purchase intentions of Wuhan cuisine and the factors influencing their consumption behavior, and puts forward a total of 21 hypotheses, and through the results of the data analysis, 4 hypotheses do not hold, and 17 hypotheses hold.
It is found that quality value, emotional value, cognitive value, health value and cultural value have positive effects on tourist satisfaction and purchase intention, while social value has no significant effect on satisfaction and purchase intention, which is consistent with the results of Choe and Kim (2018).Similar to the view of Abdul-Muhmin (2010), this study also confirms that higher tourist satisfaction has a more positive impact on tourist attitude.The higher the tourists' satisfaction is, the more likely they are to take the initiative to buy or recommend Wuhan cuisine.
Different from previous studies, Chen and Chang (2013) and Jin et al. (2016) believed that perceived risk had a significant negative impact on satisfaction and purchase intention, but this study found that perceived risk had no significant impact on satisfaction and purchase intention, because, due to the popularity of Ctrip and other travel apps, Tourists can have sufficient channels to inquire and learn about the information of tourist destinations before traveling.Some food bloggers also introduce food from all over the world, so that tourists can intuitively understand the relevant information of local cuisines such as food ingredients, taste and price.As a result, tourists' subjective perception of Wuhan cuisine risk is weak, and it is difficult to have a great impact on their satisfaction and purchase intention.
Based on the above results, the Wuhan government, tourism enterprises, catering and other related enterprises can implement various positive strategies to improve the quality of food tourism services in Wuhan and develop the Wuhan tourism industry.To improve the quality of Wuhan cuisine, enhance the sensory memory of tourists and enhance their satisfaction by increasing the taste and visual experience.Paying attention to food the government and relevant administrative departments shall intensify the investigation and punishment of food safety, investigate and punish the food and enterprises that do not meet the requirements of food safety, and make food safety disposal plans.For the staff of tourism and catering enterprises, the government shall strengthen training, improve the professional quality and service attitude of the staff of tourism and catering industry; analyze the cultural meaning of Wuhan cuisine, such as the production technology, historical evolution, celebrity events, etc., combine the function of food with Jingchu culture, and show it to tourists; strengthen publicity efforts, innovate marketing strategies, make full use of network information publicity, promote Wuhan tourism and Wuhan cuisine on various social media in an all-round, multi-density and continuous manner; expand the popularity of Wuhan tourism and Wuhan cuisine, and enhance the attractiveness of Wuhan tourism and Wuhan cuisine.

CONCLUSION
This paper aims to study and determine the factors that affect tourists' purchase of delicacies in Wuhan.The results show that quality value, price value, emotional value, cognitive value, cultural value and health value have significant positive effects on tourist satisfaction and purchase intention, and tourist satisfaction, tourist attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control have significant positive effects on purchase intention.By identifying the factors that affect tourists' purchase intentions of Wuhan cuisine, the competent government departments, tourism enterprises and catering enterprises can formulate positive and effective strategies to enhance tourists' perceived value of Wuhan cuisine, so as to improve tourists' satisfaction and their willingness to buy Wuhan cuisine, thus promoting the sustainable development of Wuhan food tourism.

H1b:
Price value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects satisfaction.H1c: Social value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects satisfaction.H1d: Emotional value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects satisfaction.H1e: Cognitive value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects satisfaction.H1f: Cultural value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects satisfaction.H1g: Health value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects satisfaction.H2a: Quality value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects tourists' purchase intentions.H2b: Price value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects tourists' purchase intentions.H2c: Social value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects tourists' purchase intentions.H2d: Emotional value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects tourists' purchase intentions.H2e: Cognitive value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects tourists' purchase intentions.H2f: Cultural value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects tourists' purchase intentions.H2g: Health value of Wuhan cuisine positively and directly affects tourists' purchase intentions.H3: Perceived risk of Wuhan cuisine negatively and directly affects satisfaction.H4: Perceived risk of Wuhan cuisine negatively and directly affects purchase intentions.H5: Tourist satisfaction positively influences tourists' attitudes.H6: Tourist satisfaction positively affects tourists' purchase intentions.H7: Tourist attitude positively affects tourists' purchase intentio ns.http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/im.20(3).2024.01H8: Tourist subjective norms positively affect tourists' purchase intentions.H9: Tourist perceived behavioral control positively influences tourists' purchase intentions.

Table 2 .
Individual travel preference analysis of samples

Table 3 .
Exploratory factor analysis