The Mediating Effects of Tourism Experience and Destination Perceived Value in the Relationship Between Tourism Image, Food Storytelling, Authenticity, and Tourists' Behavioral Intentions

This study aims to explain the value creation mechanism in gastronomy tourism by examining the roles of tourism image, food storytelling, and authenticity as antecedents shaping tourism experience, destination perceived value, and tourist behavioral intention. Data were collected from tourists who participated in gastronomy tourism activities and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results confirm that gastronomy tourism image, food storytelling, and authenticity have significant positive effects on tourism experience, with gastronomy tourism image exerting the strongest influence. Tourism experience, in turn, has a strong positive effect on destination perceived value. However, tourism experience does not directly influence tourist behavioral intention. Instead, destination perceived value fully mediates the relationship between tourism experience and behavioral intention. Further mediation analysis reveals that tourism experience serves as a key mechanism through which gastronomy tourism image, food storytelling, and authenticity influence destination perceived value. The assessment of predictive relevance (Q²) demonstrates that the model has strong predictive capability, particularly for tourism experience and destination perceived value. In addition, the Importance–Performance Map Analysis (IPMA) highlights tourism experience and gastronomy tourism image as highly important constructs with moderate performance, indicating substantial opportunities for strategic improvement. Overall, the findings suggest that gastronomy tourism does not generate behavioral intention through experience alone, but through tourists’ evaluation of destination value. This study contributes to the gastronomy tourism literature by clarifying how experiential, symbolic, and cultural elements are transformed into perceived value, which ultimately drives tourist behavioral intention. The results also provide practical insights for destination managers and policymakers seeking to develop sustainable and value-oriented gastronomy tourism strategies.