Determining food tourism consumption of wild mushrooms in Yunnan Provence, China: A projection-pursuit approach

As the first of the six elements of tourism, food is an important part of tourism activities. As an important driving force for the economic development of tourist destinations, food tourism plays an increasingly important role in tourism and has gradually become an important hub connecting tourists, local residents, and tourist destinations. This study takes Yunnan wild mushrooms as a case, obtained data through a questionnaire survey and applied a projection pursuit model (PPM) to explore the driving factors affecting food tourism consumption. Research shows that the quality and abundance of gourmet resources are the most important factors affecting tourist consumption of gourmet foods, and the needs and experiences of tourists also promote their consumption, to a certain extent. This provides a guide for Yunnan Province to expand the source market. Second, we compared PPM with structural equation modeling (SEM) and demonstrated that the former requires less data than the latter and is immune to nonlinearities, interaction effects, and the researchers' excessive prior knowledge. This makes PPM more robust, anti-interference, accurate, and objective than SEM when dealing with problems. Finally, we put forward reasonable suggestions from four aspects of government, enterprises, local residents, and tourists, which provide an effective way for Yunnan Province to develop food tourism. In addition, PPM's advantages in data selection, data processing, and result stability fill the gaps in data processing in the tourism field.