Social relationships between wineries and local communities : perspectives of North Carolinians from the Piedmont Triad

8/2/2016 Social Relationships between Wineries and Local Communities: Perspectives of North Carolinians from the Piedmont | NC State University Social Relationships between Wineries and Local Communities: Perspectives of North Carolinians from the Piedmont North Carolina Wine Trails North Carolina, home to over 100 wineries, ranks fourth nationwide as a wine tourism destination (NC Department of Commerce, 2012). Recently, NC wineries located near each other have been forming wine trails to strengthen their tourism appeal and increase visitors' numbers and expenditures. The development of wine trails is also important to foster cohesive and harmonious communities (Briedenhann & Wickens, 2004). The Piedmont Triad in north central North Carolina is fast developing a wine industry; as of 2015, the Triad has more than 30 wineries arranged in 11 wine trails (Figure 1 ). However, due to such fast development, we are yet to know the nature of the relationships between these wineries and their neighbors. Understanding these relationships is important to foster community bonding as well as socioeconomic and civic benefits in surrounding communities (Meyer-Cech, 2005). Thus, we randomly surveyed 663 households within 10 miles of the Haw River and Surry County wine trails of the Triad to learn about their level of social relationship with their nearby wine trails.1 Both trails are comparable in terms of number of wineries (four each) and medium length (43 and 32 miles). Although the wineries in the Haw River trail offer a broader variety of tourism amenities than those in the Surry County wine trail, neither trail has a winery that dominates the tourism destination (Xu et al., 2016). This report summarizes the results from 334 completed surveys (52% response rate).2 1 The sample included 401 households around the Haw River and 262 around the Surry County. The survey, distributed using a drop-off/pick-up method, inquired about residents’ sociodemographic characteristics, their relationship with the Triad region, and their perceptions of different types of relationships with local wineries. 2 A combination of statistical tests was used for data analysis (p-value <.05): Descriptive statistics to profile respondents, Cronbach's reliability tests within the items comprising the social dimensions, and multivariate regressions to examine associations between residents’ profile indicators and their perceptions of the winery-community social relationships. NC STATE UNIVERSITY NC COOPERATIVE EXTENSION Enxxwwnj Рвс&е ■ Ргхм SoOaons http://content.ces.ncsu.edu/social-relalionships-between-wi neries-local-communities# 1/6