Tourism Happiness Index

Abstract

Research on the happiness of tourists is becoming popular recently. The study thrives to start this work and develop a scale to measure tourism happiness in Eastern India. Two studies need to be conducted, following a cross validation approach. The first study is qualitative using content analyses, aiming to identify the factors and variables considered essential for making tourists happy. The sample in study 1 consists of 300 tourists of Eastern India selected by stratified random sampling method. Based on the content analyses, a questionnaire will be developed. Study 2 aims to initiate the scale validation. The questionnaire developed in study 1 will be answered by a second sample of 400 tourists visiting Eastern India. The exploratory analysis will identify some first order factors. The next step is to proceed with confirmatory factor analysis to validate the model and propose a final scale. A structural equation modelling approach is used with the help of current versions of SPSS and AMOS packages.