The role of fairs with local products as co-creation initiatives for community development. Case study: the "Iașul în Bucate" food event, Romania

Simona- Roxana Ulman¹Cristina Cautisanu¹LUCIAN TANASA^2*Meda Galea²Ioan Sebastian Bruma²Simona Beatrice Manolache³Silvius STANCIU^3*

• ¹CERNESIM Environmental Research Center, Department of Exact Sciences and Natural Sciences, Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Iași, Romania, IASI, Romania
• ²Academia Romana Filiala Iasi, Iași, Romania
• ³Universitatea Dunarea de Jos din Galati, Galați, Romania

The food events can be one useful tool for gastronomic tourism for supporting the achievement of its main aims. In such a context, the practical organizational necessity of knowledge on the perspectives of visitors and vendors, especially in the case of an event based on participatory governance in which all the voices should be heard, is addressed in this study. It concentrates on a food event that supports locally produced food and is organized in a collaborative approach. The primary objectives of this exploratory descriptive case study are (i) to emphasize the main organizational particularities of the ”Iașul în Bucate” food event, with a focus on its co-creation approach, (ii) to analyse the profiles of visitors and producers participating here, and (iii) to comparatively study their main arguments for participation to the event. For this, a mixed approach to data collection was applied, combining the strengths of two survey tools: a quantitative and a qualitative one. Accordingly, 146 questionnaires were completed and validated in the period between July 2022 and September 2023 across the 7 editions of the fair, while, in the case of producers, the data was collected through interviews administered at the level of 34 vendors that were present at the same editions. The study revealed the common arguments for participation, but also the differences among both perspectives of visitors and vendors, which can represent paths for passing from adaptive learning to generating and transforming learning into organizing events. The findings respond to the identified gaps from the literature regarding (i) the lack of focus on small-scale events in a European context, (ii) the inadequate integration of the co-creation approach in the organization, without proper documentation; (iii) the insufficient concentration on the seller, with a higher attention given to the visitors.