Rural tourism has been a key research area over the last few decades. However, evaluating the advancement of its dimensions as a systematic and comprehensive audit was long overdue. This study performed a bibliometric analysis on 404 articles from 1980 to 2019 and revealed that rural tourism has maximum growth in the last two decades. Deductive and quantitative methods are the principally implemented theoretical and methodical approaches, respectively. The developed countries have majorly contributed from 1980 to 1999, while the last two decades the developing nations have contributed. The rural tourism research in the developed world has matured by debating critical issues such as community politics, power struggle, resource control, whereas these issues along with several new issues, such as climate change and epidemic, have ample scope in future especially in the context of Eastern World. This study offers an insight into the evolution of conceptual framework, authorship, institution-specific productivity, spatial distribution of study areas, crucial themes, and the future research directions. The present findings will work as a comprehensive reference to the potential research dimensions and add to the existing knowledge body of the tourism research in general and the rural tourism research in particular.

The growing consciousness among consumers regarding the toxic effects of traditional beauty products has developed consumer interest in organic beauty products as an alternative. This study investigates how social media and consumer engagement reinforce this interest and influence consumer purchase intention of organic beauty products. The results of 213 datasets collected through the online platform and analyzed by structural equation modeling suggest that both social media and consumer engagement positively and significantly affect the intention to purchase organic beauty products. The research also found a significant mediating role of consumer engagement between social media influence and purchase intention. While no moderating effect of generativity was found between consumer engagement and purchase intention. As consumers’ purchase decision of organic products is influenced by social media, this study suggests marketers allocate greater budgets to social media to increase consumer engagement. Additionally, it presents a fresh perspective on the organic beauty industry through the lenses of social influence theory and calls for further research into the new paradigm of social media influence on the consumption of organic beauty products.

Purpose: The importance of smart tourism technologies (STTs) has been rising recently, but how STTs are related to tourists' psychological well-being has got little attention. The study intends to show how STTs increase tourists' psychological well-being by capitalizing on the theory of Tourism 4.0. The study investigates the associations between the factors of STTs with the perceived benefit and, subsequently, perceived benefit with the psychological well-being of tourists. Moreover, this study also examines the moderating impact of a growth mindset (GM) between perceived benefits (PB) and tourists' psychological well-being (TPW) in the tourism industry.Design/methodology/approach: Using a structured questionnaire, 243 responses were collected through the convenience sampling method. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for the analysis.Findings: Findings show that automation, security/privacy concerns, information accuracy, and personalization are significantly related to the PB of tourists. The results also confirm that a GM moderates the relationship between PB and TPW.Practical implications: The results show the social and managerial importance of the perspective of tourism in developing countries. Based on the tourism 4.0 concept, this study presents a theoretical contribution by expanding practical information regarding the link between STTs and psychological well-being. Moreover, the study shows some directions to the tour operator about improving PB and psychological well-being. The notion of tourism 4.0 is a new paradigm that seeks to unlock the psychological well-being of visitors through the hyper-interconnectedness of humans and technologies.Originality/value: This study contributes to prior research on technology-based tourism by exploring the uncharted STT variables, PB, GM and psychological well-being. Moreover, the study makes an empirical effort to conceptualize the tourism 4.0 concept on the proposed relationships. Tourist firms should focus on implementing this theory to develop their business.

This study intends to determine the dimensions of local cuisine image by classifying the vital cuisine traits that are used by foreign tourists for their local food assessment; and inspect any variances in the perceived local cuisine image of Eastern and Western tourists (based on their country’s geographical position from India). It applied multivariate and descriptive statistics for analysing the data of 419 foreign tourists in Delhi. 24 factor items were used to measure the tourist’s perceived image of local cuisine which were subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis in order to reduce them into a smaller set of underlying constructs. Results indicated that all the foreign tourists were very much satisfied with their overall food experiences in Delhi. Further, they also positively evaluated four perceptual/cognitive dimensions of local cuisine, i.e. Food authenticity and culture; Emotional food image; Freshness & taste; and Nutritional value & digestibility. The dimension of Price & quality of food was found to be worst perceived amongst the foreign tourists. Overall, this study provided an improved knowledge about creating a destination cuisine image from the foreign tourists’ outlook, and how this notion can be used to efficiently market and envisage the exclusivity of a destination like India.

Purpose: Although both institutional export assistance and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) contribute separately and positively to export performance, the interplay between them has received little attention. This study examines the role of international EO in deriving performance benefits from governmental and nongovernmental export assistance.Design/methodology/approach: In this longitudinal study, two surveys were administered at two different times: In 2011, 705 Bangladeshi apparel exporters were surveyed, and in 2019, a subsequent survey of 198 firms in multiple industries was conducted. The aim of the surveys was to assess the relationships between governmental and nongovernmental assistance, EO and export performance.Findings: The results of the first survey show that, while nongovernmental assistance influences performance directly and via EO, governmental assistance has only direct effects. Furthermore, the negative influence of government assistance on EO reduces the total effects and renders them nonsignificant. The results of the second survey demonstrate that government EPPs have both direct and indirect positive and significant effects on market performance, indicating a partial mediation, whereas quasi-governmental assistance has positive and significant direct effects as well as negative but nonsignificant indirect effects. Nongovernmental EPPs have both direct and indirect significant effects on international performance, indicating a partial mediation.Research limitations/implications: The study has important implications for researchers studying export assistance and its impact on firm performance. Instead of adopting a parochial view of government assistance, this study categorizes such assistance into three types – government, quasi-government and nongovernment. Furthermore, this study bridges the export assistance and international entrepreneurship literature by including EO.Practical implications: Entrepreneurs must emphasize the use of government assistance in order to enhance export performance. However, to promote both entrepreneurship and performance, they must emphasize nongovernment assistance. Exporters should also capitalize on the assistance extended by various quasi-governmental agencies to bolster export performance.Originality/value: Given the performance advantage of export assistance, this study highlights the contribution of the private sector in promoting export entrepreneurship while shedding light on the pernicious role of (quasi-)governmental assistance in export entrepreneurship.