Interaction Of Domestic Tourists’ Travel Needs And Behavior

With the increasingly fierce international competition and fast changing market environment, resource development and product design are no longer key issues in tourism destination competition. Instead, the importance of meeting tourists’needs and obtaining actual revisit attract vast attention. Under the upcoming challenge of striving for tourism market, understanding and forecasting the dynamic travel motivation and its influence mechanism with travel behavior, has become the inevitable solution for domestic tourism destination. Those domestic tourism destinations at a competitive disadvantage have to break through the restricted development by matching the products and services with tourists’dynamic travel motivation. In this context, understanding travelers’motivation and behavioral characteristic systematically and comprehensively, would be the stand point of sustainable and healthy development of demestic tourism destination.The key of knowing tourists’needs and behavioral characteristics is matching the dynamic relationship of travel motivation and behavioral intention properly. Controversy of the relationship between motivation and behavioral intention has long existed in the academia, focusing on whether there is certain connection between travel needs and actual travel behavior. In other words, there is no consensus on whether given travel motive will lead to specific tourism destination correspondingly. Researchers revealed opposite conclusions in different motivation theory frameworks, leaving the relationship between travel motivation and behavioral intention an unexplainable myth. This study could be seen as a part of this classical debate, which try to answer the specific research question:How could tourism destinations obtain tourists’actual revisit, by understanding their travel motivation, perceived constraints, and dynamic travel career pattern?Reserach samples are domestic tourists who visited Hangzhaou during the data collecting period. Convenient sampling was adopted for questionnaire distribution. After three-month data collecting process at main scenic spots and international youth hostels,640valid samples were gathered, covering31provinces, municipalities, and special administive regions. Most of the collected samples are females (59.7%), that are mainly younger than30years old (71.3%), whose monthly income are below8000RMB (86.7%). More than seventy of the samples have bechlor or higher degree,50.7%have more than10times of domestic travel experience,35.2%have international travel experience.Based on literature review, three inter-related sub-studies are conducted in this study. Firstly, the components of domestic tourists’motivation and perceived constraints, and interrelationship of motivation and "demotivation", are investigated by analyzing collected data of samples from most places of China. Secondly, travel career pattern of domestic tourists is revealed by adaptation of TCP theory, followed by a revised decision model for tourism destination. Thirdly, dynamic influence mechanism of domestic tourists’travel behavior is further investigated, based on the possible relationships between motivation, perceived constraints, attitude, and behavioral intention, taking the well-known tourism destination Hangzhou as the case. The whole picture of influence mechanism between motivation and behavioral intention is presented through all these three sub-studies.With all three sub-studies, composition and interaction mechanism of domestic tourists’travel motivation and constraints are analyzed, dynamic travel career pattern of these tourists is revealed, decision model for tourism destinations is also extracted, and the influence mechanism of travelers’motivation and revisit intention is comprehensively explained in the end. Followings are the three main conclusions.First, there is no significant difference between Chinese and westerners’travel motivation and constraints. The most important motivation and "demotivation" exists independently from each other. Based on the framework of travel career pattern (TCP) theory, fourteen dimensions of travel motivation of domestic tourists are found, including nature, novelty, self-actualization, self-development (host-site involvement), escape/relax, self-development (personal development), relationship strengthen, stimulation, isolation, nostalgia, relationship (safety), autonomy, recognition, and romance. Domestic tourists’travel constraints are in consistency with the framework of three-dimension perceived constraints, including structural constraints, interpersonal constraints, and intrapersonal constraints. Interrelationship between motivation and constraints exists in between positive relationship of isolation and interpersonal constraints, and recognition and intrapersonal constraints, negative relationship of isolation and intrapersonal constraints, and relationship (safety) and intrapersonal constraints.Second, travel career pattern of domestic tourists can be seperated into higher and lower level groups, and be specified to four modes in revised decision model. Influenced by age and past travel experience, domestic tourists of higher level travel career pattern are younger, have more experience of both domestic and international travel. Those of lower travel career pattern are older, have less experience of both domestic and international travel. The revised TCP decision model provides a more specific and reliable theoretical evidence for planning, development, and operation of tourism destinations for target market.Third, some dimensions of travel motivation and perceived constraints have significant influence on attitude and revisit intention, with attitude partly as the mediator. The results of case study of Hangzhou show that nine dimensions of travel motivation, including self-development (personal development), self-actualization, relationship strengthen, escape/relax, relationship (safety), self-development (host-site involvement), nature, novelty, and nostalgia, have significant positive influence on attitude. Five dimensions of travel motivation, including self-development (personal development), self-actualization, relationship (safety), nature, and nostalgia have significant positive influence on revisit intention, with nature fully mediated by attitude, and other four dimensions partly mediated. Intrapersonal constraints have negative influence on revisit intention, partly mediated by attitude. By knowing the influence mechanism of tourists’revisit behavioral intention, managers of tourism destination could further response to tourists with different travel career patterns more efficiently by their age and past travel experience. More tailored products and services could be provided, and tourists’different travel needs could be meet by overcoming certain constraints correspondingly. Main theoretical contributions of this study are as follows.First, contributing to the study of domestic tourists’motivation and perceived constraints. Based on a mass of existing research on travel motivation, this study timely applied the latest promising travel career pattern (TCP) theory in the systematical analysis of domestic travelers’potential motivation. Motivation related theory frameworks were clarified with the research standard of psychology rigorously. The final conclusion could be seen as a break througth of the restrict of tourists’ typology or travel mode. The findings of this study have significant theoretical contribution to the research of domestic tourists’motivation for the wide applicability in tourism operations. This article also timely introduced the most well-known three-dimension model of perceived constraints in analysis of domestic tourists’perceived constraints. Meaningful attempts for both theoretical research and practical application were made. This study extended research direction of revision and modification of relative theories by applying three-dimensional framework of perceived constraints innovatively and investigating interactive mechanism of travel motivation and "demotivation" systematically.Second, contributing to the deepening and contextualization of travel motivation related theories. This study investigated the relationship between travel motivation and tourism destination by focusing on application and revision of travel career pattern (TCP) theosy. Analysis results of interview and questionnaire data of domestic tourists not only empirically validated cross-cultural applicability of TCP theory in the context of China, which added the reliabilty of TCP theory. Further proposition of decision model by combination of research findings and development and operation of tourism destination also improved the precision of tourism products and services design, development, and operation by matching target tourists’travel motivation with their age and travel experience efficiently.Third, contributing to the research of tourists’loyalty to tourism destination. In the case study of tourists’travel motivation, perceived constraints, attitude, and revisit intention to Hangzhou, this study investigated the driving and restriction mechanism of motivation and "demotivation". The research model could be seen as an invation of relative theoretical frameworks, especially in the integration of dynamic motivation framework, which making the research findings more reflective of tourists’ interior psychological elements of travel behavior. Due to the complexity tourists’ psychological and behavioral characteristics, the most promising travel motivation theory, TCP theory, was applied in this study. In combination of key factors of travel behavior,"demotivation"/perceived constraints and attitude, this study examined the interative mechanism of between each pair of these factors multi-dimensionally, which is the supplement and extension of existing studies, providing more theoretical and empirical evidence for future relative research.Finally, the mismatching of design and development tourism products and services of domestic tourism destination, and tourists’ needs could be resolved timely. This study decomposed the complex and dynamic influence mechanism of tourists’ travel needs and behavior, and provided solution and reference for domestic tourism destination that is confronting such problems contemporary or about to meet by deepened analysis of case study of Hangzhou.