Green Agritainment: VET strategies for Edutainment in European Agritourism

Eurobarometer 535 – The EU Ecolabel published in September 2023 showed that, when it comes to making decisions about food consumption, 73% of consumers say that the impact of food on the environment is “important” or “quite important,” and 81% agree or strongly agree that buying food with a lower environmental impact can make a difference, showing sensitivity to environmental issues.
However, despite efforts to promote awareness of healthy and sustainable food consumption, the recent Eurobarometer ‘Food safety in the EU’ published by EFSA in March 2022 showed that average knowledge of food risk factors
declined from 2019 to 2022 among the general population (from -3% to -7%). Reduced knowledge of the technical aspects of sustainable food may mislead consumers in terms of making the right choice of healthy and sustainable food
The EU Ecolabel, established in 1992 to promote sustainable consumer choices in various sectors, including tourism, through the EU Ecolabel for tourist accommodation initiative, according to Eurobarometer 535, remains unknown to the majority of EU citizens, with 62% of EU citizens having never seen the logo (IE = 80%, RO = 70%; BG = 70%; CY = 64% EL= 61%; IT = 51%). There is a discrepancy between EU citizens’ interest in choosing sustainable food and tourism consumption and their knowledge of processes related to the sustainability aspects of food and tourism.
The Agritainment project aims to promote an innovative model for reducing this knowledge gap through recreational education activities carried out in agritourism, which represent a model that agritourism owners and employees can adopt to attract visitors and help them understand the value behind sustainable food and tourism accommodation services through entertainment.
The use of humor in education has been extensively studied in scientific research and has been proven to be effective in promoting knowledge, attention, memory, and critical thinking in a wide range of settings, such as e-learning (Erdoğdu, Ünal Çakıroğlu, 2021), environmental education (Cook et al., 2022), environmental awareness and persuasion (Moyer-Gusé, Tchernev, Whitney Walther-Martin, 2019), and universities (Henzel, Pair, 2020; Daumillier et al., 2020). Yeo et al. (2020) also demonstrated the positive effect of humor on technical information via social media.
The Agritainment project aims to promote integration between sustainable food and tourism, to convey knowledge about sustainability policies to customers through humor and entertainment techniques and methods incorporated into educational visits, educational marketing activities in agritourism to promote environmentally friendly behaviors and attitudes among visitors, increasing the attractiveness of agritourism visits and explaining the value behind sustainable food and tourism.