Consumer co-creation in rural tourism: insights from Emilia-Romagna Region

Consumer co-creation in rural tourism: insights from Emilia-Romagna Region This master thesis investigates consumer co-creation activities in the context of rural tourism, their main drivers and impacts on consumer behaviour. The research employs a quantitative approach, performing a survey among consumers and testing a structural model. The sample was collected amongst the population of the Emilia-Romagna region through a survey designed on google moduli and distributed through a snowball sampling approach using Facebook, private messages and e-mail. The structure of the survey was adapted from Fandos-Herrera (2024), with the addition of some other constructs relative to motivation to co-create and proneness to sustainable behaviours The organisation of the theses is as follows: in the introduction the topic are introduced and the objectives outlined, as well as the contribution of the study to the current existing literature. The first and second chapter review the theoretical background on co-creation and rural tourism, providing the framework for the empirical analysis. The third chapter presents the methodological approach, the objectives of the empirical work and the structure of the questionnaire. In the Fourth chapter the statistical analysis is reported, complete with the descriptive results and the Structural Equation Model developed to explore the relationship between the latent constructs. The conclusions paragraph ends the manuscript, with the main takeaways from the managerial and theoretical standpoint, as well as highlighting the limitation of our research and the possibility for future studies.