Tourists' Emotional Responses to Street Food Experiences in Vietnam
Creators: name: PHAM, LINH LE DIEU
Publisher: name: University of Surrey
Year: 2021

description: Consumption emotions responded to food experiences have been found to determine satisfaction and behavioural intentions. The associations between emotions and different food properties and environmental factors, and individual differences, or other cognitive appraisal processes have been established. Consumption emotions have also been found to play an important role in the understanding of tourists’ behaviours. Researchers have just begun to explore the impact of emotions on tourists’ experience with local, but few specifically on street food. Street food has been found to be both an attraction and an impediment to tourists. Either way, tourists’ experience of street food has been found to link to their perception of destination image, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions.
description: This research aims to uncover the meanings that international tourists to Vietnam attribute to their street food experience in Vietnam, with a focus on their emotional responses, and in relation to their overall food experience and travel experience in Vietnam. The research comprised two qualitative studies. In the first study, thirty-eight international tourists, travelling in Vietnam in the last quarter of 2018, were interviewed with in-depth interviewing and the emojis to facilitate expression of emotions. Interviews were then transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. In the second study, 1045 TripAdvisor reviews of the street food tours in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam 2018, and 92 low-rated reviews (rated 1-3 stars) of the tours in four cities were chosen for analysis. Content analysis was used to analyse these reviews due to the large amount of data.
description: In the eyes of international tourists in Vietnam, street food was found to exhibit many typical traits that may attract tourists: food and drinks, food places, and their social and cultural values. Street food could also be perceived as an impediment to consumption for international tourists due to its hygiene and safety conditions, or novelty or communication barriers. Regarding the emotional responses to street food experiences, it was found from these studies that tourists’ expressed emotions are closely linked to their cognitive evaluation or appraisals of the food experiences. These appraisals include novelty, unexpectedness, the unknown and risks, and the distance from expectations or motivations or goals. Emotional responses to street food experiences were found to vary in valence, intensity and time. These emotional responses were also associated with tourists’ behaviours towards street food, being categorised to approach, avoid and caution responses.
description: This thesis helps to expand knowledge in local food tourism and tourists’ perceived risks; and recognises the role of appraisal component of emotion, and the dimension of time in consumption emotion. The research also contributes to the understanding and application of emoji in eliciting emotions in qualitative interviews. Managerial implications can be drawn for the operation, management and marketing of street food as a tourism product.