• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.124-138
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• 2010

This study aims to investigate the effect of hotel and restaurant employees' eating habits on their dining-out behavior. 309 workers from die hotel and restaurant companies participated in the survey, and SPSS 14.0 was used to perform frequency analyses, factor analyses, f-tests, ANOVA and multiple regression analyses. An exploratory factor analysis revealed three eating habits; unhealthy, healthy and ideal eating habits with 62.250% of the cumulative variance explained. The factor analysis included the priority on menu items, atmosphere and location of a restaurant with 60.658% of the total variance explained The results of the t-tests gave partial supports for the hypothesized gender difference in eating habits and for the hypothesis that eating habits would differ according to marital status. The result of ANOVA gave a partial support for die hypothesized age difference in eating habits. The result of the multiple regression analysis showed that all eating habits, unhealthy($\beta$=0.326, p<0.000), healthy($\beta$=0.290, p<0.000) and ideal($\beta$=0.305, p<0.000), had a significant effect on the priority on menu items. Eating habits explained 13.1% of die total variance in the importance of restaurant atmosphere and location. The influence of unhealthy eating habits was not statistically significant ($\beta$=0.002, p<0.965) while the influence of healthy($\beta$=0.309, p<0.000) and ideal eating habits($\beta$=0.189, p<0.000) was statistically significant Consequently, there was a partial support for the hypothesis that eating habits would influence die priority of restaurant atmosphere and location as a factor when dining out.