The Measurement of Customer Satisfaction in Sicilian Agritourism (Italy) through the Estimation of a Probit Model

Purpose: the objective of this work is to measure customer satisfaction in the Sicilian agritourism. Design/methodology/approach: in order to collect the necessary data, an ad hoc questionnaire was realized. The questionnaire, that was anonymous, was directly distributed with the face-to-face method. Questionnaires were given to 200 men and women aged under 30. The data collected were processed through Probit estimation. Findings: although the objective of our research is to analyse the measurable customer satisfaction only for the real users of farm structures, we believe it is important not to neglect, at least preliminarily, those individuals who have never experienced the stay in a farm. This allows us, therefore, on one hand, to verify through a Chi-Squared test, whether or not there is a connection between having stayed or not on a farm and the social-demographic and the behavioural characteristics of the respondents belonging to the two groups; on the other hand, through the estimation of a Probit model which takes into consideration only people who actually stayed on a farm, we will be able to identify the factors that could have influenced, positively or negatively, "customer satisfaction". Originality/value: the originality of the research consists mainly in a deeper knowledge of customer satisfaction in Sicilian agritourism. This information is useful to better define the rural tourism market and to allow, especially to small businesses, to establish effective marketing strategies in relation to the real preferences of tourist and the decision-making process of choice put in place by them.