Assessing Halal Tourism Literacy: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

As consumers in the halal tourism market, Muslim tourists are expected to follow clear guidelines in consuming a product, but not everyone does so. A possible reason for this is that they have a low understanding of halal tourism literacy. This study explores the concept of halal tourism and proposes an instrument and indicators to measure halal tourism literacy among Muslim tourists. This study proposes two methods: a) an instrument with 19 test-based questions and 2) an instrument with eight perception-based questions. The questionnaires consist of Likert scales and true-false questions, developed based on past research and validated using focus group discussions (FGDs). The ratio of correct and incorrect answers is used to determine the level of difficulty of each question item. After the construct validity was tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the scores were used to categorize respondents into high, medium, and low literacy groups. Meanwhile, the concurrent validity test looks at the correlation between the actual halal tourism literacy and the perceived halal tourism literacy. The CFA results declared valid the 17 out of 19 test-based questions and all the eight perception-based questions. Meanwhile, the correlation test results showed that perceived halal tourism literacy positively correlates with actual halal tourism literacy. This research seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge, especially in proposing measurement items for halal tourism literacy.