Abstract:
In the Tourism industry, agrotourism has gained more attention as a form of
sustainable tourism and this helps to rural development, culture heritage preservation,
enhancing the tourist knowledge about agricultural lifestyle. Sri Lanka can provide
opportunities for tourists to engage with tea plantations, spice gardens, organic farms,
and traditional rural communities. Potential tourist can experience farm environments
before making travel decisions by using virtual farm tours, including video-based tours
and interactive digital content. Limited research has explored how virtual farm tours
shaping agrotourism destination selection. This study uses a quantitative approach
with 300 agrotourism-interested respondents selected through purposive sampling.
Data were collected via an online questionnaire after viewing a virtual farm tour video.
Measures used a five-point Likert scale, and data were analyzed using SPSS (Version
26) with reliability, validity, and moderate analysis. Pearson correlation analysis
revealed a moderate positive relationship between virtual farm tours and agrotourism
destination selection (r = .459, p < .01), and between trust and destination selection (r
= .364, p < .01). A strong positive relationship was found between trust and virtual farm
tours (r = .752, p < .01). Moderation analysis further indicated that trust significantly
strengthens the relationship between virtual farm tours and destination selection (β
= .098, p = .017), explaining additional variance (R² = .007), confirming its moderating
role. This study, based on the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework, finds
that virtual farm tours significantly influence agrotourism destination selection in Sri
Lanka, with trust strengthening this relationship. The results highlight the importance
of authentic virtual content. Tourism stakeholders should invest in realistic, highquality
virtual tours to enhance trust and attract global tourists.
