Identifying sufficient and necessary drivers of return intention in culinary tourism: a case study of Vietnam using PLS-SEM, MGA and NCA

Purpose This study distinguishes between sufficient and necessary drivers of return intention in culinary tourism and compares these mechanisms between domestic and international tourists in Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach Survey data were collected from 410 tourists at five typical culinary tourism destinations in Vietnam. Partial least squares structural equation modeling, multi-group analysis and necessary condition analysis (NCA) were employed to analyze the collected data. Findings All examined factors positively and significantly influenced return intention (RI), indicating their roles as sufficient drivers. However, the NCA results show that significance did not automatically imply necessity. At the full-sample level, consuming experience, co-creation experience (CC) and local food brand equity (BE) emerged as necessary conditions for high RI, whereas foodscape did not. At the group level, CC was the strongest necessary condition for domestic tourists, while no single factor emerged as a meaningful necessary condition for international tourists. Practical implications Destination managers should not allocate resources evenly across all experiential attributes. Instead, they should prioritize securing threshold conditions, particularly CC and local food BE, because weaknesses in these dimensions may constrain high RI. The results also indicate that managerial strategies should be tailored by tourist segment, with stronger emphasis on co-creation for domestic visitors and more flexible experiential pathways for international visitors. Originality/value This study extends culinary tourism research by integrating necessary-condition logic with conventional sufficient-condition analysis and introducing a threshold-based perspective on RI formation.