Do the emotional appetites of gastronomic tourists influence their gastronomy tourism motivations?

The primary aim of this study is to examine the effect of gastro-tourists' emotional appetite on their travel motivations for gastronomy tourism. Additionally, the study seeks to determine the mediating role of weight satisfaction in this relationship, as well as to investigate the impact of gastronomy tourism motivations on the intention to choose such destinations. The research was designed within the framework of the relational survey model and conducted with data collected from gastro-tourists visiting Gaziantep, Türkiye. The sample consists of 393 gastro-tourists. During the data collection process, the Emotional Appetite Scale, Gastronomy Tourism Travel Motivations Scale, Intention to Choose Scale, and a Demographic Information Form were utilized. The data were analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method through SmartPLS 4.0 software. The findings indicate that positive emotional appetite has a significant and positive effect on gastronomy tourism travel motivations. However, the effect of negative emotional appetite on gastronomy tourism travel motivations was found to be neither positive nor significant. Furthermore, weight satisfaction does not play a mediating role in the relationship between emotional appetite and gastronomy tourism travel motivations. On the other hand, it was determined that gastro tourists with higher gastronomy tourism travel motivations also exhibit a higher intention to choose such destinations. For gastronomy-rich destinations like Gaziantep, promotional content highlighting positive emotions and experiences can be effectively utilized in gastronomy tourism marketing. Additionally, social media algorithms can leverage user-generated content featuring positive emotions to increase the visibility of gastronomy tourism content in discovery feeds. This study contributes an innovative and comprehensive perspective to the gastronomy tourism literature, both theoretically and practically, and future research is recommended to further explore these relationships through different tourist profiles and qualitative methods.