Ethnic food consumption intention at the touring destination: The national and regional perspectives using multi-group analysis

Ethnic food is largely chosen to be consumed by tourists in order to better appreciate the local culture. An ethnic food experience has increasingly become a popular food activity for many tourists. Although the Dayaks are the largest indigenous group in Malaysia, little has been done to explicate Dayak food consumption intention from the tourists' perspective. The present study uses the theory of planned behaviour to investigate tourists' intention to consume Dayak food when they visit Sarawak, Malaysia. Specifically, tourists from Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah, Singapore and Indonesia, are sampled to examine and compare consumption intention. A questionnaire based survey was administered, and PLS-SEM was used to perform the path and multi-group analyses. While these tourists appear to share a lot in common in their consumption intention, they are different in terms of how they intend to consume Dayak food in Sarawak. The implications of the study are provided.