In the analysis carried out, it was decided to apply the Social Network Analysis (SNA) “or” Analysis of Social Networks “. It is a method that analyzes human resources and intervenes on them by reading and interpreting them as social networks. use of rigorous methodologies and specific calculation algorithms, graphical and metric representations are produced that allow us to understand how the organization works, which models it is inspired by, how people are placed in the network of relationships. Social Network Analysis also provides a formal and conceptual means to talk about social aspects (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). It is a quick application tool and allows you to represent a fluid and evolving reality (Carrington et al., 2005). In general, it is from the diffusion of theoretical notions that great impetus has been given to the development of network methods (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). As part of this study, it was decided to use a particular type of bimodal network, the “Affiliation Network”. The method has some properties that distinguish it, including the fact that a set of actors is related to a set of events in which the actors participate, thus allowing to study a relational system from a double perspective. In addition, the connections between the components of each set are obtained starting from the links established by each component of a set with the components of the other set (Breiger, 1974; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). We speak, in fact, of dual networks, precisely to emphasize the perspective in which the links between the actors are mediated by their participation in the event, and the events are connected to each other through the sharing of members. Starting from the affiliation matrix, two other matrices can be derived through matrix algebra operations. The networks obtained are uni-modal representations relating to the set of actors and that of events; the transition from the bi-modal network to two uni-modal networks involves obtaining matrices with value starting from a dichotomous and non-directional matrix, which reflect the intensity or frequency of the link (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). For the purposes of analyzing the level of cohesion of the network, the following were considered: density, distance and centrality. These three aspects, each under a different profile, serve to provide information on the degree of cohesion of the network. The reading of this information is possible through some indexes that allow, for each aspect, the attribution of particular dimensions. Therefore, we will have as a measure of density the average density index, as a measure of distance the Average Distance and the Distance-based Cohesion and for the centrality measures the Degree, Close and Between indices.

The consumer analysis is inspired by a large sample of consumers interviewed on several occasions in Calabria in the period 2017-19 as part of research carried out on consumption preferences and places of purchase. The interviews involved 1,029 people intercepted by eight researchers adequately trained to administer the questionnaires. They were carried out “face to face” in crowded places where you could meet a sample with not very homogeneous characteristics, such as bus terminals, main roads, or intercepted at fairs and gastronomic events, near supermarkets, municipal markets, etc. The questionnaires administered look in particular at:

In this contribution, consumers were selected who agreed to buy typical local products on the occasion of gastronomic events organized by local authorities representing 26.6% of the interviewees (274 people, of which 31 tourists). The calculations look at the socio-economic aspects and the answers provided on a likert scale from 1 to 5 with reference to five questions regarding the following reasons for enjoying local artisan food:

This study focused on the Locride area in the province of Reggio Calabria. The area is characterized by economic and social fragility with unsatisfactory levels of growth and employment and which, to some significant extent, can be traced back to socio-economic factors such as widespread depopulation, especially in the innermost areas, the aging of the population, the abandonment of agricultural land, the abandonment of houses. However, the territorial context in its broadest sense, despite having numerous social and economic constraints, is endowed with innumerable material and intangible resources, territorial capital and human capital (environmental and cultural assets, productive excellence, secularized human capital, etc.) that the territory is able to express and systematically underutilized. Locride, in fact, is among the most evocative geographical areas of Calabria: a strip of land squeezed between the last eastern buttresses of the Aspromonte and the Ionian coast, some of the municipalities that make up the area fall within the National Park of Aspromonte. The area is characterized by the suggestive medieval villages suspended on the Aspromonte hills. Locri, Gioiosa Ionica and Gerace are the most popular places. These villages, rich in history and tradition, frame a landscape full of contrasts and, without a doubt, one of a kind. The Locride area is also characterized by its traditions and its gastronomic specialties: in such a varied area there are many typical quality products, such as meats, oil and cheeses, mushrooms, berries, honey, to which add products of value like truffles. The survey of which we present the results, stems from the consideration that agri-food products have progressively become a distinctive element of the territory and its most authentic vocations in which the food and wine sector and the growing interest that revolves around local events and events dedicated to food, represent the essence on which the concepts of typicality and tradition related to the recovery of culture, history and local knowledge have been grafted.

Furthermore, through the festivals, fairs and events dedicated to food and gastronomy, they represent an occasion of celebration and meeting for residents and an attraction for vacationers and tourists looking for gastronomic experiences to taste and experience the local gastronomy and traditional. On these occasions, tourists and vacationers meet and communicate with the local population and their culture. It thus becomes a way to get in touch with the historical heritages of a territory and its community, consolidating the relationship between the “typical” local community, territory and tourist, historicizing and consolidating this relationship. As several authors have pointed out, the triad of food, places and communities is enriched by the spread of festivals and special events (Frost & Laing, 2013; Silkes et al., 2013; Dimitrovski et al., 2021), which they play a significant role in stimulating local economies as the activities and experiences that attract tourists favor job opportunities for local communities (Cafiero et al., 2019). Such events can therefore represent a development opportunity for a territory and create income and employment through a virtuous chain that involves all operators who, for various reasons, come into play in the agri-food, food and wine and tourism system. It is crucial to note for the purposes of a complete vision of the possible solutions to the weaknesses deriving from the low economic impact on the territory of interest, which often lacks one, or more than one, of the following strengths: 1) the lack of a true and concrete will of aggregation between producers, even in the basic regulation of production processes - collection - treatment - transformation, etc.; 2) the absence of a prodromal “story telling” of the product and its links with traditions, communities and the territory itself, which is now indispensable in image sales processes. In this work we focused in particular on 18 events organized in 2018/2019 by 11 municipalities in the Locride area in the province of Reggio Calabria and focused on 16 main local gastronomy products proposed by local producers. As for consumers, surveys carried out in the province of Reggio Calabria on a sample of 1029 interviewees in the period 2017-2019 showed that about 27% of the interviewees (274 people) buy local gastronomy products at fairs, food and wine events, among they about 11% are tourists.

In some cases, the gastronomic specialties present on the occasion of these local events are known and marketed on national and international markets; while others are produced in limited quantities and consumed only locally. We have paid particular attention to the truffle, “flag product” of the Locride area and to the possibility of enhancing the “Calabrian Truffle” in the belief that it is extremely necessary to activate promotional tools to collect all the economic and social opportunities that can be activate for local populations, in the same way as what has been done in other regions of Italy.

In the study, a basket of typical or traditional products of the Locride area was identified, for which it is proposed that specific forms of joint marketing can be activated in order to create virtuous synergies between producers (Maso et al., 2006) and applied to such a portfolio of products, the Affiliation Network. In particular, in the Affiliation matrix that we have created, the rows indicate the actors / producers of 16 main agri-food and typical products, while the columns indicate the 18 events organized in 2019 by 11 municipalities of the investigated area and in which the producers participated (festivals, gastronomic events, fairs, etc.). Once collected, the data is organized in the Affiliation matrix, a dichotomous matrix formally referred to as:

where aij = 1 if the actor row i participated in the event column j, or aij = 0 otherwise.

On the basis of the information collected, the incidence and adjacency matrices were constructed to examine the network relationships based on the choice of manifestations / events in which to participate.

For data processing, the UCINET 6.0 ver. 6.631, while for the graphic representation the NETDRAW ver.2.161.

To examine the network analysis, some network cohesion measures have been developed, in particular the density which represents one of the main indicators of the degree of cohesion of a network (Salvini & Miller, 2005) and the centrality, which measures how much a node is an actor important of the network. Density, in particular, represents one of the main descriptive measures adopted to investigate the degree of cohesion of the network. This index is given by the quantity of relationships and corresponds to the ratio between the number of links actually present in the network and those potentially activated.

With reference to consumers who buy local gastronomy products. The elaborations, after a brief description of the socio-economic characteristics of the interviewees, examine, through a specific question, on the reasons that lead them to seek and taste local foods, both in general and in particular for those who attend and buy at food and wine events.

As mentioned, the analysis related a set of food and wine events and events and a set of products. The events were organized in the municipalities of: Martone, Ciminà, Ardore, Africo, Bovalino, Bivongi, Bianco, Platì, Locri, Mammola and Gerace. The area is a portion of the larger one known as the Locride in the province of Reggio Calabria. The products considered are chestnuts, caciocavallo, Greek wine from Bianco, Gerace wine, Mantonico wine, caciotto, pecorino from Locride (PAT), lemoncetta, EVO oil, IGT wine from Locride, smoked ricotta, prickly pear shovel juice, Mammola stock, Mammola breech, mushrooms and truffle (Figure 1).

In the municipalities of the Locride area, various events were organized in the period 2017-19 that represent an attraction for the local population and for tourists and vacationers, these are cultural events and conferences, gastronomic festivals, festivals, fairs, exhibitions-market of local products, patronal festivals. Table 1 identifies the flagship products and the participation of local producers in the various types of events.

The producers participating in the events obviously have a diversified range of sales and marketing of their products, both locally and nationally and, in some cases, even internationally. However, their participation in the Events and Shows organized by the municipalities has a social value of belonging and presence in the territory. The most well-known products such as those that can boast a quality marks (PDO, PGI, Slow Food, etc.), represent an additional attraction for participants in gastronomic events, the niche ones, which are more difficult to find, represent an opportunity for consumers to be found.

Network analysis applicated examines only the products present during various events. The density represents one of the main indicators of the degree of cohesion of the Network. As can be seen from the table below (Table 2), the density value is 57.5% and represents a good degree of cohesion, confirmed by the standard deviation of 0.4943. The Geodesics distances also show that the pairs of actors are close together and that the producers are well connected to each other.

Table 3 examines the Network Centrality measures.

In the empirical analysis of social networks, the concept of centrality takes on particular relevance as it allows you to position an actor in your network in purely relational terms. Centrality can be expressed in three ways: Degree Centrality, Closeness Centrality and Between ness Centrality.

The first measure is the simplest and looks at the choices made by the actors (Products). The values indicated respectively represent: The Index the number of participation in the events (the table is indicated in brackets); while the Norm In Degre is a standardized data (divided by n-1) indicated as a percentage.

The second measure examines the distance between the points, so a node is more central if it is located at the shortest distance from many other nodes, i.e. it is closer to many other points (in our study the reference is relative to the other products / events) also the value of this measure is a standardized datum.

The third measure examines to what extent a product is able to trigger an intermediation, in our case it represents a push towards the fruition of events show more links in the various events of Locride are highlighted: Olio Evo, Ciminà Caciocavallo cheese, Gerace wine and Stocco di Mammola, followed by Greco wine, Mushrooms and Chestnuts. The lowest links was recorded by Lemoncetta and prickly pear Pala juice (just 6.6%), the other products show links at events ranging from 20% to 60%. In the case of Closeness Centrality, it is a question of examining the most central and most peripheral nodes in relation to the distance between the points. It means that a node is more central if it is located closer to the other nodes. Also in this case, what is shown with the measure relating to density is confirmed, therefore Olio Evo, Gerace wine, Ciminà Caciocavallo cheese and Stocco di Mammola have the greatest incidences (100%), while pecorino PAT, Culatta di Mammola, smoked ricotta, caciotto, Lemoncetta and prickly pear shovel juice remain the most peripheral products (from 6.6% to 9.0%) in relation to their ability to participate in food and wine events in the Locride area.

Finally, the measure of Centrality as an interposition (Betweenness Centrality), does not look at the direction of the bond, but indicates how much a person is intermediary between two other people within the group. In our case Mushrooms (4,643), Caciocavallo di Cimunà (2.200), Stocco di Mammola (1.584), Gerace wine and Local extra virgin olive oil (1.446) are the most central and significant products in the representation of the potential of the productive reality of Locride.

Figure 2 shows the sociometric network of relations between producers and food and wine events (exhibitions, fairs, conferences, etc.) in the Locride area, as you can see each relationship is represented by an oriented arrow, as the relationship is considered asymmetrical.

Figure 3 shows the map of the relationship networks resulting from the analysis. Specifically, it is a survey of the products present in the events organized by the municipalities of Locride. The names of the products have been indicated in the original language.

From the elaborations (Table 4) it emerges that most of the consumers interviewed are aged between 31 and 50 years (38.7%), with a slight prevalence of women (50.3%). The highest percentage for the scholastic level is recorded between the high school (31.2%) and the degree (40.2%). Household income is equally distributed between the upper middle and lower middle classes (32.8% in both cases). They are residents of Calabria (55.8%), about 11% say they are on vacation at the time of the interview. The preferred shopping places also for local handicraft products in the proximity are large-scale distribution and retail (55.7%). About 20% of the interviewees shop at the City market. Those who buy these products regularly or occasionally at events, festivals and food and wine events represent 24.4% of the sample. The events, in many cases, also represent an opportunity for a family outing for local consumers.

The results of the Table 5 show that for the interviewees the link with the territory and the desire to acquire local knowledge and culture through local food is important, linking them to new gastronomic experiences, local culture and the possibility of meeting people, 63.1% responded positively (32.7% a lot and 30.4% a lot). Consumers affirm the importance of associating specific sensory emotions such as aromas, taste, touch, well-being experienced to that place, linked to the social matrix given by the food of that territory and the surrounding landscape (58.4% a lot and a lot) and for 21.8% it is on average important. To escape the routine is one reason deemed less important than the other reasons (52.4%). Food experienced as conviviality and an opportunity for sharing to meet people and be together with friends and family is considered very and very important (64.5%), only 18.4% consider it of little or no importance. Finally, the desire to obtain prestige and tell friends about their experiences on vacation also through the description of local dishes and foods records a high interest in 49.3%, while this aspect is of no or little interest to 27.6% of the interviewees.