The attitudes and awareness of the local community towards gastronomy tourism: The case of Kastamonu

The economic gains that tourism activities bring to the country, region and / or touristic destinations are regarded as a reliable starting point for overcoming major structural problems. This qualification of tourism has given birth to the main agenda of developed countries in recent years as much as it is in terms of undeveloped and developing countries. Nevertheless, in order to maximize the economic benefits of tourism, it is believed that individuals who live in the destination country, region and / or touristic destination should be in a positive attitude towards tourism and tourism. In this context, the main purpose of the research is to reveal the awareness and attitude of the Kastamonu people, who are thought to play an active role in the development of Gastronomy Tourism, which is still in its birth stage in Kastamonu. In order to accomplish the purpose of the research, the related literature was deeply scanned and a scale was developed with the help of the secondary data obtained. Developed scale has been practiced with the households living in the Central District of Kastamonu face to face with an approach based on judicial and voluntary principles. The data has been collected from 384 people through a survey of 115,000 people living in the Central District of Kastamonu during the year 2017. In the analysis of the obtained data, a statistical package program widely used in social sciences was used. Expressions / questions that measure awareness of participants' demographics as well as Gastronomy Tourism are explained by frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean and standard deviations. The expressions that measure attitudes towards gastronomic tourism were solved by factor analysis. Factor analysis resulted in four dimensions. Correlation analysis was also conducted to examine the significance of these dimensions. As a result, the Kastamonu people did not know enough about the products and foods of the region, and the dishes cooked from these products were not liked very highly. The results also show that the public of Kastamonu has a weak awareness towards Gastronomy Tourism but a positive attitude towards Tourism and Gastronomy Tourism. Key terms; Gastronomy Tourism, Local Community, Attitude, Kastamonu 2018, 103 pages Science Code: ....