engleski

Local Residents as Visitors to Exhibitions: Investigating Motivation and Attitudes towards Traditional Food Festivals

Traditional food and beverage can improve a destination's attractiveness and facilitate the creation of authentic local and cultural identity, while improving the tourist experience. Food and beverage festivals are interesting for tourists, but also for local residents, who are an understudied segment in this field. The intensity of the link between traditional foods and residents has grown because of the many festivals that promote traditional cuisine. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the characteristics and motivation of local residents towards visiting traditional food exhibitions. The survey was conducted on a sample of 133 visitors, during the Histria Food and Beverage Exhibition held in Pula, Croatia. Results indicate that buying is the main motivation of the local population, which is willing to pay 20-30% more for traditional food and beverages than for other products. Regarding product characteristics, respondents gave the highest importance to quality and tradition, while the least important attribute is design and packaging.

local residents ; exhibitions ; traditional food ; motivation ; cultural identity

This paper presents the results of the research on the project HISTUR – Tourism as a common (cultural) heritage of the coastal area of the peninsula Istria, which is funded by the European Union through the European Territorial Cooperation Slovenia - Croatia.