Seniors’ travel motivation and the influential factors: An examination of Taiwanese seniors
Introduction
The steady improvements in life expectancy have produced rapid growth in the world's senior population, and this trend is predicted to continue during this century (National Research Council, 2001). According to Rand (2001), the number of people who are 65 years and older increased more than threefold since 1950, from approximately 130 million (about 4 percent of global population) to 419 million (6.9 percent) in the year 2000. The number is currently increasing by 8 million per year and this increase will reach 24 million per year by 2030. The most rapid growth in the senior population will start after 2010, when the large post World War II baby boomers begin to reach age 65 (Rand, 2001). Another important observation is that the proportion of those aged 65 years and over in Asia, which is the fastest growing region, is expected to more than triple by 2050 (Kinsella & Velkoff, 2001). With such a large demographic shift, the senior market has been cited as one of the most important consumer segments (Greenberg, 1999; Shoemaker, 2000; Wuest, Emenheiser, & Tas, 2001). In addition to the substantial size of the segment, the increasing disposable income of senior people means great potential and significance to the consumer industries (Bai, Jang, Cai, & O’Leary, 2001; Faranda & Schmidt, 1999; Marvel, 1999). Furthermore, time flexibility after retirement seems to make the senior market more attractive to travel businesses that are suffering from seasonal demand fluctuation.
The increasing attention to the senior market segment is a worldwide phenomenon. Besides North America and Europe, the phenomenon also exists in one of the major economies in Asia, Taiwan (the Republic of China). The average life expectancy in Taiwan was 75 years in 2000, which was placed at 32nd position among 201 countries in the world (Director General of Budget Accounting and Statistics, 2001). Representing 11 percent of total travelers, Taiwanese seniors who are 60 years and older make up a large portion of the travel market (Ministry of Transportation and Communications of Taiwan, 2001). Indeed, Taiwanese senior travelers emerge as a significant segment to domestic and international destinations targeting this increasingly lucrative market, even though the segment has not drawn strong attention from tourism researchers.
Understanding seniors’ travel motivations is a critical issue to travel marketers who compete for this important market (Crompton, 1979). As Pearce and Caltabiano (1983) argued, traveler behavior can be predicted by underlying motivations. Therefore, identifying the variables that influence seniors’ travel motivation allows travel marketers to effectively understand the motivations and better tailor tourism products and services for the senior market segment.
According to Romsa and Blenman (1989), socio-economic variables, including age, gender and economic status, play a crucial role in the vacation behavior of seniors. Blazey (1987) added that health status is critical for seniors to be motivated and to participate in travel activities. In addition, another variable resulting from research in senior travel market may be ‘affect’ which represents people's evaluations of the events that occur in their lives. In psychology, ‘affect’ is often understood as an emotional state and is held to arise as a function of one's assessment of the meaning, causes, consequences, and personal implications of a particular stimulus (Westbrook, 1987). Seniors are often confronted with life-stage events that include retirement and death of spouse and friends. These life transitions may trigger emotions of uncertainty, fear, depression, and inadequacy (Mroczek & Kolarz, 1998). Travel is frequently utilized among seniors to offset emotions of disillusionment and distress. In this respect, it seems to be worthwhile to investigate whether affect, in addition to socio-demographic variables (e.g., age, gender, economic status, and health), has a significant impact on seniors’ travel motivations.
In light of the significance of the senior market and lack of motivational literature, this study attempted to fill a research niche by investigating Taiwanese seniors’ travel motivations and the influential factors on the motivations. More specifically, the objectives of this study were (1) to uncover underlying factors of the motivational push and pull forces associated with Taiwanese seniors and (2) to identify the relationship between their travel-motivation factors and socio-demographic (age, gender, economic status, and health status) and affect variables.
Section snippets
Seniors’ travel motivation
Motivation refers to a psychological condition in which an individual is oriented towards and tries to achieve a kind of fulfillment (Bromley, 1990). According to Moutinho (2000), motivation is a state of need or a condition that drives an individual toward certain types of action that are seen as likely to bring satisfaction. Mook (1996) also defined motivation as the cause of human behavior. An examination of the literature indicates that travel motivations based on the push and pull factors
Methodology
The data used in this research were collected from senior citizens, aged 60 years or over who were attending continuing education classes at the Senior Service Centers in Taipei, Taiwan. The senior citizens were taking a variety of courses offered at the Centers such as language, computer, and arts. A total of 13 Senior Service Centers participated in this study; including six publicly owned and managed and seven publicly owned but privately managed service centers. Among 550 self-administered
Sample profile
The socio-demographic characteristics of the sampled Taiwanese senior travelers were profiled and presented in Table 1. Descriptive analysis of the sample showed that the mean age of the respondents was about 67 years, and the standard deviation was about 7 years. Since 68 percent of the observations fall within one standard deviation of the mean in the normal distribution (Moore & McCabe, 1998), it is believed that the ages of about 68 percent of the seniors ranged between 60 and 74 years. The
Conclusions
The main purpose of this study was two-fold: to delineate the travel motivations of Taiwanese seniors and to study variables thought important in explaining the underlying travel motivation. Using factor analyses, this study identified travel motivation factors based on a push and pull model. The five push factors extracted were: ‘ego-enhancement’, ‘self-esteem’, ‘knowledge-seeking’, ‘relaxation’, and ‘socialization’. The three pull factors identified as underlying dimensions were: ‘cleanliness
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