---

Food festivals and events are growing in popularity and warrant in-depth studies of festival visitors. Given the increasing socio-economic significance of this vibrant component of the world´s leisure industry, gaining knowledge of food festival visitors and their expenditure patterns is essential to festival researchers and destination marketers. This book provides an in-depth examination of food festival visitors and their consumption traits. Specifically, a conceptual model has been developed to delineate the correlations among the visitors´ expenditures, event- and food-related motivations,and food involvement traits. When compared with those of the extant literature on culinary tourism and events, the results and discussion of this study confirm certain previous findings and, also, challenge some common assumptions. Based on the study´s key findings, a conceptual model was developed to illustrate the detailed correlations among a number of variables related to the food festival visitors´ characteristics. Theoretical and practical implications of the study towards future research issues are subsequently drawn from the findings.

---

Dr. Yaduo Hu is an independent researcher and writer huyaduo@gmail.com . She holds a Doctoral Degree in Recreation and Leisure Studies from University of Waterloo, Canada. Her current research interest in the areas of tourism is in the ways in which festivals and events have been used to improve local economy and community development.

---