Comparing potential agritourists’ assessment of highly authentic and highly appealing agricultural landscape features
T here has been ample discussion about the fluidity and complexity of authenticity, as well as about the construct’s social and cultural relativity. This debate, termed by Jafar Jafari as the “dilemma of authenticity”, centers on conflicting stances about the ways authenticity might influence tourist behavior. On one hand, some maintain that existential authenticity is an implicit selling point of tourism experiences. Further, for western tourists, authenticity has been claimed to be a key factor affecting tourist’s experiences and destination choices. Others, however, contend that people no longer value authenticity and/or are suspicious of its commercial purposes. From those perspectives, the authentic and inauthentic are no longer symmetrical counter-concepts. Understanding tourists’ perceptions of what is authentic and appealing is of the utmost importance to businesses and destinations. Owners of small working lands are in special need of this knowledge because they are of