Tourists Motivation

Tourist Motivation

Introduction:

Nowadays, many destinations try to attract more international tourists and take advantage in tourism industry. Therefore, many researchers conduct a lot of reach to explore tourists’ behavior. Tourists’ motivation is one of the most popular reach topics to identify the behavior of the tourists. Although motivation is only one variable explaining tourist behavior, it is regarded as one of the most important variables because it is a force behind all behavior (Crompton, 1979; Iso – Ahola, 1982). Hence, this assignment will discuss how tourists’ motivation affects the destination to form the market segment.

Theory of push and pull factors:

The theory of push and pull factors is one of the method to explain tourists’ motivation. As a result, there are a lot of literatures around this topic. Traditionally, the theory of push and pull factors is established by Crompton on 1979. His findings are consisting of 39 unstructured interviews. According to his findings, he identified nine motives for travel motivation, seven of motives are defined as a “push” factors which is concern about tourists’ social – psychological. The remaining two are “pull” factors which was relevant to the particular destination attributes. The motives of “push” factors are: escape from a perceived boring environment, exploration and evaluation of self, relaxation, prestige, regression, enhance the family relationship and social interaction. The remaining two are novelty and education. This theory can explore motivation that the destination can have some degree of influence on vacation behavior in meeting a rouse need.

In addition, the other researchers modified the “push” and “pull” factors base on Crompton’s finding after 1979. For example, Yuan and McDonald (1990) examined the motivations for overseas travelers applying the theory of “push” and “pull” factors. However, the items within “push” and “pull” factors’ category were different from Crompton’s finding.

The application of the theory:

The topic of this journal is Product bundles and market segment base on travel motivations. This journal was established by Heung Chul Oh, Muzaffer Uysal and Pamela A. Weaver on 1995. They studied 1030 respondents who were come from Australia. The findings of this journal was tried to understand the tourists’ motivation, then, applying the information to form the market segment. For the part of tourists’ motivation, the researchers utilized the “pull” and “push” factors to examine what was the tourists’ motivation. Besides, they wanted to know the relationship between these two factors for overseas travel. In this journal paper, the researchers mentioned three findings which were discuss the theory of “push” and “pull” factors. They were Crompton (1979), Yuan and McDonald (1990) and the last one was Uysal and Jurowski (1994).

In this journal, the researchers utilized the findings of Yuan and McDonald (1990) instead of Crompton’s (1979) findings. The objective of this journal was tried to analysis how to make use of tourists’ motivation to form the market segment. Therefore, the researchers should find the information how the destination attract the tourists. Hence, the finding which is focus on “pull” factors was suitable for this journal because “pull” factors was related to the destination attributes. Conversely, the findings of Crompton was concentrated on “push” factors which is consider tourists’ social – psychological and only two motives was “pull” factors. According to the findings of Yuan and McDonald (1990), they classified seven “pull” factors: they were budgets, culture and history, wilderness, ease of travel, cosmopolitan environment, facilities and hunting. Also, there were five “push” factors: escape, novelty, prestige, enhancement of kinship relationship and relaxation/hobbies. Therefore, the findings of Yuan and McDonald (1990) were more appropriate than Crompton’s findings (1979) to apply in this journal to examine the tourists’ motivation.

According to the real situation, the researchers still adjusted some items of both “push” and “pull” factors from the findings of Yuan and McDonald because they may found that some items may not be suitable for this case. According the table 3 (Appendix 1), there were six “push” factors within the table. They utilized most of the items from Yuan and McDonald’s finding except relaxation/hobbies and by knowledge/intellectual and sports. It may be the fact that the definition of relaxation/hobbies is too wide and they want to get more specific and clear information to explore the tourists’ motivation. Also, this method to categories two items instead of one was appropriate to real situation for this case because these two items can make good use of the second part of the journal which is form a market segment. In my point of view, changing the items to knowledge/intellectual and sports was more suitable for the research. Additionally, these two categories were more effective to analysis the tourists’ behavior.

As for the “pull” factors, the researchers adjusted half of the items in this journal. There were only five factors within this category. They only make use of budgets, culture and history, wilderness and missing ease of travel, cosmopolitan environment, facilities and hunting. The researchers only keep the other three factors and they added safety/upscale and sports/activity. In my point of view, examining safety issue was suitable for this journal because it is the fundamental requirement to the tourists, no matter the natural disaster or come from human. This factor was the most essential element to affect tourists making decision. In contrast, I believe the researchers cannot get a significant result refer to these four items because the air transportation was well connected between America and Australia, so, the researchers didn’t think that this item was appropriate to ask. As well as the item of hunting, the trend of the world was protected the environment, some countries may not allow hunting. So, the item of hunting was inappropriate in the journal. Therefore, there were only three items can fit for this journal.

Conclusion:

To be conclusion, the researchers made good use of Yuan and McDonald’s (1990) finding on “push” and “pull” factors to understand the tourists’ motivation even though they had not apply Crompton’s (1979) finding. After they understand the tourists’ motivation, they can form the market segment effectively. I suggest that the researchers can do a research for a city or region rather than a country because some of the factors cannot be applied into at the same time. For example cosmopolitan environment and wilderness was not appropriate to apply for America because it has both cosmopolitan environment and wilderness area. If the researchers only research a city like Las Angles, they can use all the items at once. Moreover, the result can be better than this journal.

Reference:

Crompton, J.L. (1979) Motivations of pleasure vacations. Annual of Tourism Research 6, 408-424.

Iso – Ahole, S. E. (1982) Toward a Social Psychological Theory of Tourism Motivation: A Rejoinder. Annual of Tourism Research 12(1), 256-262.

Oh, H. C., Uysal, M. & Weaver, P. A. (1995) Product bundles and market segments based on travel motivation. Int.J. Hospitality Management. Great Britain: Elsevier Science, 123-137.

Yuan, S. and McDonald, C. (1990) Motivational Determinants of International Pleasure Time. Journal of Travel Research 24(1), 11-36.