Culinary Heritage as a Driver of Experiential Tourism: Examining the Behavioural Dispositions of Tourists Engaging with Wazwan in the Kashmir Valley

This study examines the role of Wazwan, the traditional multi-course culinary heritage of the Kashmir Valley, in shaping tourists' experiential and behavioural outcomes. Grounded in experiential consumption theory, expectation confirmation theory, and the theory of planned behaviour, this study develops a conceptual model examining the relationships between culinary heritage experience, cultural identity perception, tourist satisfaction, destination attachment, and revisit intention. Survey data were collected from 348 domestic and international tourists who visited the Kashmir Valley and were analysed through partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings of the study indicate that culinary heritage experience considerably influences tourists’ satisfaction (β = 0.470, p < 0.001), cultural identity perception, and destination attachment, all of which contribute to revisit intention. Bootstrapped mediation analysis reveals significant specific indirect effects, including CHE → TS → RV (β = 0.155, p < 0.001), CHE → DA → RV (β = 0.111, p < 0.001), and serial mediation CHE → TS → DA → RV (β = 0.061, p < 0.001). Similar mediation patterns are observed for cultural identity perception. Variance Accounted For (VAF) values indicate partial mediation. The results demonstrate that culinary heritage operates via a multi-stage mechanism in which experiential evaluation (satisfaction) precedes emotional bonding (attachment), ultimately shaping behavioural loyalty. The study contributes to experiential tourism literature by providing empirical evidence from an underexplored cultural context and offers practical insights for leveraging culinary heritage in destination development.