Examination of Chinese tourists' unsustainable food consumption : causes and solutions

Abstract

Gastronomic tours have become a prevalent form of travel in many destinations and have boosted the development of destinations' tourism economy. However, unsustainable food consumption, especially the wastage of food by tourists, is severe and has yet to receive sufficient academic attention. Thus, this study aimed to examine this kind of unsustainable behavior from tourists' perspective to help the academia and practitioners to better understand the causes and solutions pertaining to the issue. Participants' demographic information and content data were collected and analyzed. Content analysis was adopted to summarize the major themes emerging from the data. Results indicated that tourists, the industry, and government should be responsible for the issue. The reasons related to each stakeholder are shown together with the countermeasures. This study is among the first to examine the issue, which can lay the foundation for further studies in the same research area and help to address unsustainable food consumption.