From Plate to Payment: How Willingness to Pay Shapes Tourist Gastronomy Choices in Sarawak

Abstract

The mediating Role of Willingness to Pay (WTP) in Sarawak’s Gastronomy (SG), intention to highlight the issue of the economic growth of the environmental factor, and tourist consumption behavior need  more attention and examination in the gastronomy tourism in the setting of Sarawak region. In addition, this research aim is to investigate the relationship between the environmental factors and tourist consumption behaviour towards the Sarawak gastronomy using the WTP as the mediating variable. The findings of this research were obtained by a questionnaire survey of 400 visitors to the Sarawak region, during October and December 2023. The finding shows that the hypothesis is supported (t=9.179, p<0.000), as the results conclude that WTP as a mediates the relationship between environmental factor and tourist’s consumption behaviour . Moreover, effect size (f2) is analysed to measure the effect of independent variables towards the dependent variable, in the context of WPT,  environmental factor indicates medium effect size. Additionally, in describing tourist consumption behavior, WTP  shows a substantial effect size of 0.486 whereby finding indicates that the Q2 values for environmental factor (0.177), WTP (0.159) and tourists consumption behaviour (0.312) are higher than 0; thus, revealing that the model has predictive relevance and validity. Therefore, these findings potentially provide a reference for thorough development strategies for a gastronomy consumption in Sarawak especially in expanding this gastronomy fields to the other regional countries of Borneo.