Sustainable development and tourism: a hierarchical statistical perspective to model European Citizens’ behaviour towards local food consumption while on holiday

In recent years, sustainability and tourist development have offered a unique vision of sustainable tourism. Furthermore, there are undeniable positive effects of tourism activities that contribute to sustainable development based on social, cultural, economic and environmental pillars and sustainable tourism development is also strongly positioned in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the UN SDGs and in the SDG 4 sustainable tourism plan. The aim of this study was to identify the drivers of sustainable behaviour changes with a focus on local food consumption on holiday. Using the official EU-27 Flash-Eurobarometer 499 survey data, we propose a multilevel, hierarchical approach to identify both individual and country-level contextual factors. The results regarding sociodemographic characteristics and travel motivation are partly in line with existing literature; however, differences such as age is considered a regional cultural difference in previous studies. Moreover, our results provide valuable insights on country-level effects on travellers’ behaviour on holiday, especially in terms of sustainable development and healthy eating habits – new findings may prove useful for sustainable tourism management and policy planning.