The contribution of agrifood fairs to rural development: the Castilla and Leon region in Spain case study

Agrifood fairs contribute to the conservation and upgrade of rural heritage, support the marketing of traditional agricultural products by small agrifood producers and to the diversification of rural activities such as the promotion of rural tourism activities. This paper focuses on the analysis of relationship between the motivation to attend an agrifood fair as a contribution to rural development, and the buyers’ wishes. The two-way dependence between the items to be explained, motivation to attend, and the explanatory items was calculated by means of a chi-squared (χ 2 ) test of significance between the items. Clusters of similar conduct have been defined in order to optimise the managerial and public policies, to get the maximum advantage of the agrifood fairs. Three clusters were obtained i) local inhabitants motivated by tradition that return to the fair and sometimes they needed to be reminded by Tourist or Council Information and gave an excellent valorisation of foodstuffs ii) tourists motivated by accident or recommendation which agree with the price although their valorisation is regular or good and iii) people interested in traditional foodstuffs that used to return to agrifood fairs and knew of the fair by press or recommendation, gave a very good valorisation to the foodstuffs and agree with the price