Wine Tourism and Visitor's Perception: A Structural Equation Modeling Aproach

The field of wine tourism is emerging at international level as a new product with significant economic potentialities and characteristics that may locate it in the paradigm of sustainable development. This paper analyzes a specific wine tourism segment, Madeira Wine tourism, in the global context of tourist consumer behavior, through perception‟s examination of wineries‟ visitors. Specifically, it is investigated the indirect influence of destination image construct on global tourist satisfaction with the travel, mediated by tourist wine involvement dimension. A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach is used to develop and to test conceptualized relationships between one exogenous and two endogenous constructs: tourist perceptions about Madeira Island attractiveness (destination image), tourist Madeira wine involvement and global satisfaction constructs. The findings indicate that global tourist satisfaction is directly influenced by the level of tourist wine involvement and indirectly by tourist Madeira Island image. The police implications of the results must be integrated in the international context of wine tourism market segment in order to explore additional exchange profits from this economic activity, like the impact of country image and wine product perception on the promotion of wine tourism in Europe. Keywords: wine tourism; structural equation modeling; global satisfaction with Madeira Wine; Sustainable Tourism Activity; wine involvement mediating effect