Factors influencing Malaysian Muslim travellers to patronize halal certified restaurant and Muslim friendly restaurant in South Korea

Abstract

At present, Muslim travellers, in general, have shown interest in travelling not only to Muslim countries, but also to Muslim minority countries such as South Korea. Due to this situation, South Korea in particular has taken the initiative to provide services to meet the demands of Muslim travellers. In the context of Halal food, it has always been an obstacle for travellers to gain satisfaction due to the limited number of Halal Certified restaurants (HCR). Other restaurants without Halal certification but also serving Halal food become alternative options for them. This type of restaurant is known as Muslim Friendly Restaurants (MFR), for example, restaurants that serve seafood and vegetarian only. Hence, this present study sought to investigate the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as a factor influencing the intention of Malaysian Muslim travellers to patronize these two types of restaurants in South Korea. The second objective was to examine the attributes of the restaurant as a moderating variable to the intention to patronize the restaurants. The last objective was to compare the intention to patronize with the demographic background of respondents. A quantitative study through online questionnaire distribution was employed and 310 responses were managed to be collected. However, only 292 data were further analysed using SPSS 26 and SmartPLS 3.2.8. The results revealed that all the key components in TPB namely attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were significantly and positively related to the intention to patronize HCR and MFR with p < .05. However, religiosity was found to be an insignificant additional predictor and restaurant attributes as a moderating variable also did not show significant impacts to strengthen or lessen the direct relationships. Moreover, only marital status, education level and monthly income of respondents were found to have a significant relationship with intention. Theoretically, the results demonstrated that TPB is indeed a robust theory to be applied in studies related to Halal food regardless of its geographical location. Specifically, this study enriched the literature by incorporating TPB into the intention to patronize two types of restaurants.