Market Segmentation of International Tourists Based on Motivation to Travel: A Case Study of Taiwan

Tourism represents a principal sector of the economy of Taiwan. Consequently, the government is currently focusing on developing the country as a major tourist destination in Asia. Thus, the primary aims of this research were to explore factors related to tourists’ motivations to visit Taiwan as well as the demographic segmentation of these foreign tourists. Using a convenience sample, 249 surveys were collected and analyzed. The results show that five push (enlightenment and reputation; unusual and affection; freedom; interpersonal communication and sharing; and family and friends relationship) and six pull factors (attitude and quality of service; cost, shopping, and tasting; diverse attraction; culture connections; sport facilities, wildlife and events; and accessibility) play important roles in the motivations of foreign tourists. Furthermore, foreign tourists can be clustered into five groups based on motivation (scenery/knowledge seekers, accessibility/expenditure seekers, relaxation/relation seekers, novelty/experience seekers, sport/service seekers) and five demographic groups (gender, age, marital status, nationality, and income). According to these results, suggestions are made as to how Taiwan could effectively develop tourism policies and marketing strategies to attract international tourists.     

Understanding Student Travel Behavior: A Segmentation Analysis of British University Students

Although the youth and student travel market has often been referred to as a lucrative niche market, there is still relatively little known about the decision-making processes and holiday behaviors of its members. The primary aim of this paper is to segment and profile British student travelers based on their motivational and behavioral characteristics. The study analyzes variations in the motivations and holiday activities of university student holidaymakers and thus contributes to a better understanding of the typologies of modern student travelers. A self-administered survey was collected from 412 students and a two-step cluster analysis was performed. The results suggest the existence of four distinct clusters: the sun-seekers, the sightseers, the in-betweeners, and the clubbers. Age and gender were, among other variables, shown to be statistically significant in shaping the tourist behavior of young people.     

Motivations Of Repeat Visits: A Longitudinal Study in Xiamen,China

This article reports on an empirical study of the motivations behind tourists' repeat visits to an urban destination from a longitudinal perspective. The study was conducted in Xiamen, a coastal city in Southeast China, which offers leisure lifestyles and attracts repeat visits. Six motivational factors driving repeat visit intentions are identified using exploratory factor analysis. Based on motivational differences, repeat visitors are typologized using K-means cluster analysis into four groups: Externally driven repeaters, Memory recallers, Novelty seekers, and Special interest repeaters. Implications of the study for destination marketing and management are also discussed.     

Second-home owners' intention to purchase nature-based tourism activity products – A Norwegian case study

Tourism is acknowledged to be an important business sector in rural areas. This paper argues that second-home owners constitute an important market segment for businesses that offer nature-based tourism activities. Previous research has shown that a number of factors influence tourist behaviour. This study examined how motivation and demographic variables affect second-home owners' intention to purchase three different types of activity products: learning, adventure, and hunting products. We found substantial variations in the purchase intentions for these products among second-home owners. These intentions were influenced by push and pull motivations, age, income and educational level. Second-home owners with a high intention of purchasing nature-based tourism activity products tend to be young, high-income, and socially oriented risk takers. Businesses offering nature-based tourism activity products should use a combination of demographic and psychographic variables when they segment the second-home market.     

饮食旅游动机对游客满意度和行为意向的影响研究

饮食旅游是近年来发展最快的旅游类型之一,但有关游客动机和行为的研究却很少.文章构建结构方程模型,剖析饮食旅游的推动和拉动动机要素,明确旅游动机对游客满意度和行为意向的作用机制.在澳门进行问卷调查获得368个有效样本后,检验假设模型,发现饮食旅游的推动动机为休闲放松、饮食猎奇和文化探索,拉动动机包括饮食产品和配套服务;休闲放松、文化探索和饮食产品对满意度有正向影响,饮食猎奇要素对行为意向有正向影响.文章从供求两方面明确了饮食旅游的参与原因及其后续效应,为发展饮食旅游、提升游客满意度和忠诚度提供了指导.     

Exploring factors influencing individual participation in community‐based tourism: The case of Kampung relau homestay program,Malaysia

This paper presents the early findings from a qualitative investigation conducted to examine how participation is practiced in a community‐based tourism program which offers homestay experience to tourists in Kedah, Malaysia. The first objective of the study was to determine where on the spectrum of participation (Pretty 1995) does the homestay program fall. The second objective was to explore the variables that may influence the extent of community participation in this program. Findings from the present study indicate that participation in community‐based tourism is influenced by community members’ motivations to participate. An important implication from this finding is that community‐based tourism projects must include awareness programs among its members so as to educate them about the project and to motivate them to participate.     

The Effect of Uganda’s Official Tourism Website on Travel Motivations and Constraints

Destination marketers increasingly rely on the official tourism website as an early point of contact with potential tourists. This research examined the effect of Uganda’s official tourism website on interest in traveling to Uganda, travel motivations, and travel constraints. Novelty preference and gender were included as moderators. A two-group randomized experimental design was used (N = 278) with exposure to Uganda’s official tourism website as the intervention (n = 139). Pre-test results show that interest in traveling to Uganda was greatest among novelty seekers. Gender had no influence. Pre-test motivations were learning, culture, novelty, and an interest in travel. Pre-test constraints were perceptions that Uganda is not safe and unfamiliar. Post-test results show that exposure to the website significantly increased interest in traveling to Uganda among all groups. Furthermore, this occurred by mitigating travel constraints rather than by stimulating travel motivations. Generalized implications for destination marketing are discussed.     

How recreation involvement,place attachment and conservation commitment affect environmentally responsible behavior

This study examines a behavioral model using latent variables of place attachment, recreation involvement, conservation commitment and environmentally responsible behavior among tourists visiting wetlands. In total, 928 usable questionnaires were collected. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were applied to the data by using LISREL 8.70 for Windows. Analytical results, which further elucidate the behavioral models of nature-based tourism, suggest that place attachment, recreation involvement and conservation commitment critically impact environmentally responsible behavior. In this behavioral model, conservation commitment simultaneously and partially mediates the relationships between place attachment and environmentally responsible behavior and between recreation involvement and environmentally responsible behavior. A series of management implications are drawn, including the need to use this information via a visitor interpretation strategy, greater use of partnerships with local communities and businesses to spread the importance of wetlands and of environmentally friendly behavior, and the need to work with other wetlands to share the type of visitor motivations best suited to encourage environmentally friendly behavior.     

Managing ghosts: exploring local government involvement in dark tourism

In the growing discussion of dark tourism, attention has focused on dark tourism theory, interpretation of tragic events, management of dark tourist sites, and visitor motivations. The local government component, however, has been overlooked in this field of study. Fame from notorious events often transfers to the city where it happened, sometimes sharing a name (the Amityville Horror, the Villisca Axe Murders, Auschwitz) whether the community likes it or not. This fame transfer creates a shared city ‘ghost’ lingering in its shadows, but draws curiosity seekers from around the globe. This study presents factors local governments should consider as they examine their role in dark tourism, including planning for site management, consideration of the safety of, and services provided to, their citizens, examination of potential economic benefits, and most importantly, to ensure that they have a voice in the stewardship of their history.     

Segmentation by motivation for rural tourism activities in The Gambia

In The Gambia, as in many other African countries, rural areas rarely profit from the turnover earned in the country's tourism sector. In academic and political literature, however, rural tourism is frequently identified as a diversification strategy that may trigger local economic development in remote communities. To promote rural tourism development, further knowledge is required to understand why tourists are motivated to engage in distinct tourism market segments. In this study, survey data was collected from 450 tourists in The Gambia using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was constructed to identify the key characteristics and motivations of tourists so that the significant market segments could be categorized and the (latent) tourist demand for rural tourism activities could be gauged. This study identified four distinct segments of tourists in The Gambia: heritage & nature seekers, multi-experiences seekers, multi-experiences & beach seekers, and sun & beach seekers. Drawing on our key findings, we conclude by identifying a development path that could diversify Gambia's tourism sector. The development path would also include event-based rural tourism initiatives that align with the motivations of the identified market segments and may additionally benefit rural communities by reducing economic leakage rates.     

Travellers' self-protections against health risks: An application of the full Protection Motivation Theory

Ensuring travellers' health and well-being is an important issue in tourism management and public health. By applying and testing the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), this study serves as one of the early attempts in tourism to explore travellers' self-protective behavior against health risks. This study conducted semi-structured interviews and an online survey. Consistent with the PMT, this study found that both threat and coping appraisals can enhance travellers' protection motivations, which in turn affect their actual behaviors. This study also provided interpretation of maladaptive perception in a tourism context and found its negative association with coping appraisal. Implications were provided on how to encourage travellers to protect themselves against health risks.     

Profiling the participants in creative tourism activities: Case studies from small and medium sized cities and rural areas from Continental Portugal

Although cultural tourists increasingly seek to experience cultural events actively and to directly engage in creative activities, empirical knowledge about the creative tourist remains limited. This study aims to characterize the motivations and profile of creative tourists. The data was collected through a survey of participants in creative tourism activities in Portugal developed by 40 pilot institutions of the CREATOUR project during 2017 and 2018, with 814 usable questionnaires collected and validated. The questionnaire had 30 questions and marked the first time this kind of research was conducted in Portugal. The questionnaire included questions on: the composition of their travel companions, their previous participation in a creative tourism experience, reasons for visiting the destination, their characterization of the creative tourism experience, an evaluation of their creative tourism experience, and their socio-demographic profile. Using a cluster analysis to analyse the data, three clusters were found: Novelty-Seekers, Knowledge and Skills Learners, and Leisure Creative-Seekers.     

Segmenting networking orientation in the hospitality industry: An empirical research on service bundling

This paper focuses on the topic of collaboration in tourism destinations. Collaboration is key to overcome the fragmentation of the tourism industry and to better satisfy the more and more experience-centric tourist. Tourism operators are increasingly involved in various types of collaborative partnerships. One among them is service bundling, which is the creation and the supply of tourism packages. The study analyses the drivers of the development of service bundling and provides a segmentation of the hospitality industry according to operators’ networking orientation. A sample of 164 hoteliers from a tourism-based region in Italy was surveyed. Four clusters of hoteliers were identified and profiled: the Relational/Socials, the Opportunists, the Innovators, and the Marketers. Each shows a specific approach to collaboration and reveals different motivations to be engaged in a partnership. Some managerial implications and directions for policy makers are also provided.     

Chinese consumers' brand personality perceptions of tourism real estate firms

This study examined Chinese consumers' perceptions of brand personality of tourism real estate firms, and classified Chinese consumers based on their brand personality perceptions towards tourism real estate as a new consumption good. The study identified five brand personality factors: humanity, excitement, status enhancement, professionalism and wellness. K-means cluster analysis further identified three distinct Chinese consumer segments with differentiated brand personality perceptions: status/humanity consumers, wellness seekers and professionalism minders. Discussions regarding culture-specific factors of brand personality in the study were provided with considerations of China's significant socio-cultural changes. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research were also discussed.     

Energy Saving and Carbon Reduction Behaviors in Tourism – A Perception Study of Asian Visitors from a Protection Motivation Theory Perspective

Many researchers suggest that global warming and the effect of greenhouse gases pose environmental threat worldwide, not to mention a threat to the sustainable development of the tourism industry. For tourism, social and behavioral changes and tourist management and education are important for energy saving and carbon reduction (ESCR). The purpose of this research is to explore tourists' ESCR behavior and its influent factors. The research framework is based on the protection motivation theory to investigate ESCR behavior in the tourism, restaurant and hotel industries. It used the survey method on 512 foreign tourists in Taiwan to discuss the environmental protection behavior. Through the linear regression analysis, obvious differences between tourists' ESCR behavior intention and actual behavior are found. A suggestion for tourism environmental education is provided according to the study result.     

Targeting Rural Tourists in the Internet: Comparing Travel Motivation and Activity-Based Segments

This study aims to compare activity-based segmentation and travel motivation segmentation from the perspective of information search behavior and online use behavior by comparing segment heterogeneity. The data were collected from users of three Finnish rural tourism websites with 1754 completed and usable questionnaires to create segmentation solutions based on travel activities and motivations using hierarchical cluster analysis and then comparing the results. The results indicate that travel activities are more useful than travel motivations in finding heterogeneous segmentation solutions, making the travel activity segments more heterogeneous than travel motivation segments as regards their information search behavior and Internet use. The results suggest that in this era of Internet marketing, travel activities are a better segmentation base than travel motivations in order to target different market segments as activities form more heterogeneous segmentation solutions.     

International volunteer tourism and youth travelers – an emerging tourism trend

This study attempted to examine the intricate associations among volunteer tourism (VT) motivations, overall image, satisfaction, trust, and the influence of these relationships on behavioral intentions among youth travelers. Our findings from the structural analysis indicated that VT motivations significantly contributed to building positive images, inducing satisfactory VT experiences, and building trust with a VT organization. Our results also demonstrated the competence of the higher-order structure of VT motivations in explicating the intention formation. In addition, the overall image, satisfaction, and trust played an important mediating role. Moreover, satisfaction with VT experiences was of utmost significance in determining intentions.     

Connecting tourists to musical destinations: The role of musical geographical imagination and aesthetic responses in music tourism

While the value of music in connecting tourists to destinations is recognized, its mechanism remains unclear. This study adopts aesthetic responses to explore how musical geographical imagination influences tourists' place bonding and subsequent behavioral intentions. This explanatory sequential mixed-methods study: 1) elucidates the connotation and effects of musical geographical imagination integrating with aesthetics in tourism research; 2) shows that tourists' aesthetic cognitive and affective responses to musical geographical imagination strengthen place bonding, and buttresses the importance of affective responses in leveraging behavioral intentions; and 3) indicates that tourists’ responses to musical stimuli differ in direct and indirect destination experience contexts, demonstrating that musical stimulus context moderates on associations of imagination with cognitive responses, and affective responses with behaviroal intentions. This study empirically expands the imagination from individual auditory spaces to a destination and advances tourism aesthetics research; it guides using music in tourism sensory marketing and tourism soundscape design.     

遗产旅游动机的核心-边缘结构研究--以丽江为例

遗产旅游动机存在着一个核心-边缘结构,核心动机源自遗产属性,而边缘动机与遗产属性关系不大。既有研究虽已认识到这个结构,但对于动机如何从属性而来的过程却关注不多。文章采用方法-目的链研究方法,以丽江为案例地,对该结构进行探讨。方法-目的链主张从属性到结果再到价值这样的层级性建构,可还原游客动机的产生过程。研究发现,游客动机来自丽江多个方面的属性：遗产属性、遗产相关属性和遗产无关属性。这些属性往往被综合起来提到,游客同时被这些属性吸引而不是单单被遗产属性所吸引。逃离和归属感这两个在理论上看应该是核心动机价值,但追溯其属性却发现产生这些价值的也包括非遗产属性。而寻求艳遇、成就感和寻找自我这些在理论上看似与核心动机无关的价值,却与遗产属性和遗产相关属性关系密切。这说明游客对遗产进行了遗产客观价值以外的建构。