Involvement: Travel motivation and destination selection

Abstract

Researchers and marketers are interested in understanding and predicting the complex behaviours of consumers. One important facet of consumer behaviour is the ‘involvement’ construct. Involvement is ‘a person’s perceived relevance of the object based on inherent needs, values, and interests’. 1 This study examined the interplay between the involvement construct and push/pull factors as motivators in destination selection. Clements and Josiam 2 found that college students who had travelled during the Spring Break vacation had significantly higher levels of involvement than non-travellers. This study surveyed 795 college students during their Spring Break vacation at the beach in Panama City Beach, Florida. Vacationers were found to be highly involved with the concept of travelling on Spring Break. As hypothesised, high levels of involvement were significantly associated with push factors relevant to travel to beachfront destinations on Spring Break. High levels of involvement were also significanlty associated with the pull factors of Panama City Beach, Florida, as a popular beachfront destination for Spring Breakers.

Urban tourist motivations: why visit Ljubljana?

“…According to Josiam et al (1999), in the process of tourism destination selection, the pull factors associated with the destination must meet the needs that lie behind the push factors driving the traveller. For example, when the traveller is motivated by "sun, sea and sand", at a minimum the destination needs to promote the availability of these.…”

Tourism experiences in a lifestyle destination setting: The roles of involvement and place attachment

“…From the early conceptual work (Bloch and Bruce, 1984;Selin and Howard, 1988) linking leisure with involvement, most leisure involvement research focuses on activity contexts (Dimanche and Havitz, 1994). Specific tourism involvement studies have been less prevalent, and include grouped touristic activities (Dimanche et al, 1991;Hwang et al, 2005); tourists to Turkey (Gursoy and Gavcar, 2003); opinion leadership (Jamrozy et al, 1996) and travel motivation and destination selection (Josiam et al, 1999). The CIP scale was selected for use in this study, which examined the applicability of a modified version of the CIP scale with the attitude object of tourism experiences to better understand the nature of tourists' involvement.…”

A conceptual and methodological framework of leisure activity loyalty accommodating the travel context

“…Activity involvement theory, defined as "an unobservable state of motivation, arousal or interest toward a recreation activity or associated product" (Havitz and Dimanche, 1997), describes a process in which individuals participate in activities, become emotionally involved, and develop loyalties through established commitments (Gahwiler and Havitz, 1998, Josiam et al, 1999, Pritchard et al, 1999, Brey and Lehto, 2007.…”