The moderating role of neophobia and neophilia in determining the factors affecting the preference of ethnic restaurants

ABSTRACT Restaurants in the food and beverage sector have a great importance in the gastronomy sector, which is constantly developing. Although the main purpose of eating and drinking is to meet the physiological needs of people, with the developments in the food and beverage sector, eating and drinking has ceased to be a physiological need, and people have been led to behaviors such as tasting different foods when they are free. Thus, the interest and needs of individuals towards restaurants are constantly increasing, so there has been an increase in restaurant diversity in order to meet this. With the effect of globalization, the cuisines of different societies and cultures have become interesting for people. In this direction, the aim of the research is to determine the level of effect of some factors that determine (service quality, food quality, dining experience, social status, marketing communication, religious food options, value of money) customers' going to ethnic restaurants on ethnic restaurant preferences and to reveal the moderator role of neophobia and neophilia in this effect. The sample of the research consists of customers who prefer ethnic restaurants in Istanbul (n=399). The data were collected from individuals who prefer ethnic restaurants by using the questionnaire method, which is one of the quantitative research methods. Obtained data were analyzed with AMOS and SPSS-24 program. First of all, confirmatory factor analysis was applied for the scales used in the research and structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships between the variables. According to the results of structural equation modeling; Service quality, Food quality, Marketing communication and Value for money variables have a significant effect on ethnic restaurant preference, whereas dining experience and social status variables have an insignificant effect on ethnic restaurant preference. When the results regarding the regulatory role are examined, it has been determined that only marketing communication has a positive and significant moderator role between the factors that determine the ethnic restaurant visit and the ethnic restaurant preferences of the customers. Keywords: Ethnic Restaurant, Neophobia, Neophilia