Wine Tourism and Sustainability Awareness: A Consumer Behavior Perspective

The research on tourism is constant and unending; food and wine tourism research still represents a small part inside this wider field. Wine tourism and events are critical for sustainable development of rural areas. In this context, the emotional bond between the wine tourists the regions and the producers that they visit is created, not just through the wine as a product, but also through a set of hedonic features that are present in the visit and tasting experience. To reach the research objectives, a quantitative methodology was chosen. For this research a questionnaire was used and completed by wine cellar visitors and distributed to wine tourism facilities. An online questionnaire was applied in wine and wine tourism social network groups. To test the hypothesis, a structural equation modelling (SEM) was used has well as an importance–performance matrix analysis (IPMA) was also used for further exploration of the results. Results reveal that brand love and wine involvement are positively related to emotional satisfaction, evaluative satisfaction, and word-of-mouth (WOM) intention. Regarding the two dimensions of satisfaction (emotional and evaluative), only the second revealed a direct and indirect positive effect on WOM. From an interdisciplinary point of view, this paper presents insights for niche marketing (i.e., wine tourism, segmentation and brand management) and for local and sustainable development. Lastly, the research limitations and suggestions for future research are presented.