Understanding and Managing the Dark Side of Food Tourism

CALL FOR PAPERS

Understanding and Managing the Dark Side of Food Tourism

Journal: Journal of Destination Marketing & Management

Publisher: Elsevier

Extended Abstract Deadline: 31 July 2026

Full Paper Submission Deadline: 31 December 2026

Introduction

Food represents the place, its people, and its culture. Food tourism — traveling to experience local food and beverages — has become a powerful tool for developing and marketing destinations and promoting regional and rural economic development. Destinations worldwide use food cultural heritage, gastronomic experiences, and food festivals to attract visitors and celebrate local culture.

However, alongside these benefits, a growing body of research highlights a "dark side" of food tourism that warrants critical attention. Popular food attractions can lead to overtourism — overwhelming crowds straining local infrastructure and natural resources. Food tourism often generates significant food waste and carbon emissions. The promotional focus on "authentic" food experiences can paradoxically undermine authenticity — as restaurants may simplify recipes, use pre-prepared ingredients, or alter traditional flavors, turning heritage cuisine into staged performances for consumption rather than living traditions.

Equally concerning are the socio-economic impacts on host communities. Tourism revenue often concentrates in the hands of a few prominent businesses — potentially marginalizing small farmers, local food producers, and residents. Tourist demand can drive up prices of local food and dining, making them less affordable for locals. Exploitative labor practices, supply-chain pressures, and the booming meal-sharing economy further disrupt local economic and social systems.

Scope & Significance

This Special Issue provides a platform for cutting-edge research on the dark side of food tourism — from sustainability pitfalls to stakeholder inequities — with the goal of guiding the industry toward more responsible and inclusive practices. It aims to move beyond celebratory accounts of gastronomic tourism and critically examine its sustainability, equity, and ethical challenges for tourism destinations, their communities, people, and businesses.

The Special Issue has three key objectives:

Theoretical Advancement — Encouraging new frameworks that integrate marketing, sustainability, and stakeholder theory to better explain how food tourism's bright and dark sides co-exist.

Methodological Innovation — Highlighting studies that apply novel or mixed-method approaches, including longitudinal, big-data, participatory, or ethnographic methods, to engage hard-to-reach stakeholders such as farmers and kitchen staff.

Contextual Broadening — Expanding the geographic and stakeholder scope of food tourism research — encouraging submissions from under-researched regions including Africa, Latin America, and Asia — and giving voice to local communities, small enterprises, and supply-chain workers.

List of Topic Areas

Manuscripts are invited on themes including, but not limited to:

1. Theoretical integrations — new frameworks combining food tourism with stakeholder theory, sustainability, or cultural studies including authenticity and commodification

2. Stakeholder collaboration and equity — governance models, power asymmetries, and fair participation along the food tourism supply chain

3. Marketing strategies and brand narratives — critical evaluations of food promotion through festivals, social media, celebrity chefs, or UNESCO designations

4. Tourist experiences and authenticity — how marketing narratives shape expectations and encourage staged authenticity or misrepresent local food cultures

5. Sustainability challenges — environmental, economic, and social consequences of food tourism including food waste, resource strain, dark meal-sharing economy, and labor issues

6. Local food systems and supply chains — ethical sourcing, farm-to-fork systems, labor exploitation, and effects of tourist-driven demand on agricultural practices

7. Post-pandemic adaptation — how COVID-19 reshaped food tourism including health regulations, local sourcing, and virtual gastronomy

8. Methodological advances — big data, network analysis, ethnography, or participatory research to illuminate hidden stakeholder voices

9. Overtourism and food tourism — crowd management, infrastructure strain, and community wellbeing

10. Climate justice and food tourism — equity issues in the Global South

11. Cultural commodification and heritage dilution in gastronomic tourism

12. The meal-sharing economy — Airbnb, home-cooked experiences, and disruption to local food systems

13. Power dynamics among tourists, DMOs, chefs, farmers, and indigenous groups

14. Vulnerable and marginalized stakeholders in food tourism — farmers, fishers, food workers

Guest Editors

Prof. Marianna Sigala University of Newcastle, Australia

Prof. Henry Cheah Chee Wei Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, China

Prof. Bendegul Okumus University of South Carolina, USA

Prof. Li Xi City University of Macau, Macau

Key Timeline

Extended Abstract Submission: 31 July 2026
(500-word structured abstract to Guest Editors for preliminary feedback)

Feedback on Abstracts: 15 August 2026

Full Paper Submission Deadline: 31 December 2026

First Round of Reviews Completed: February 2027 (anticipated)

Publication of Special Issue: Late 2027 (anticipated)

Submission Guidelines

All papers submitted to this Special Issue should follow the submission guidelines and standards of the Journal of Destination Marketing & Management. All papers will go through a double-blind peer review process following the same process and review criteria as all papers submitted to JDMM.

Step 1 — Extended Abstract Authors are requested to submit a 500-word structured abstract to the Guest Editors by 31 July 2026 for preliminary feedback and to ensure alignment with the Special Issue scope.

Step 2 — Full Paper Submission All manuscripts must be submitted through the official online platform of the journal by 31 December 2026. When submitting, select Article Type:

"Understanding and Managing the Dark Side of Food Tourism"

Final publication decisions will be made by the Guest Editors in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief.

All submissions must be original and must not be under review elsewhere at the time of submission.

Full author guidelines are available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-destination-marketing-and-management/publish/guide-for-authors

About the Journal

The Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, published by Elsevier, is a leading international peer-reviewed journal with a CiteScore of 18.4 and Impact Factor of 7.4. It supports open access publishing and is dedicated to advancing research on tourism destination management, marketing, and policy — providing a global platform for interdisciplinary scholarship exploring how destinations are planned, governed, marketed, and managed in a rapidly changing global environment.

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