Determinants of Tourists Information Search Effort: The Case of Ghana's Visitors

Abstract

The paper examines tourist information search effort prior to the visit to a selected destination. The focus was on identifying the key variables that influence the information search effort of Ghana's international visitors from the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Germany. The Dummy Multiple Regression Statistic (DMR) was employed to examine the nature relationships between tourist information search effort and a set of socio-demographic and trip variables. The results indicated that there is a pattern of stable behaviour in tourist information search effort. It was noted that on the average tourists visiting Ghana from the three countries depend on two information sources to plan their trip. Next, “age”, “income”, “distance” and purpose of visit were positively correlated with visitors information search effort whilst “ “educational level”, “marital status” “number of previous visits” and outcome of previous visit had negative relationship with visitors information search effort. Generally, it was observed that irrespective tourist country of origin; information search behaviour was better explained by socio-demographic variables (“age”, “marital status”, “educational level” and “income”) than trip specific variables (“number of visits”, “purpose of visit”, and “outcome of previous visit”) Given the findings, it was concluded that when\n developing strategies for international marketing and promotion of Ghana's tourism, especially in segmenting potential tourists by the information search effort, emphasise must be placed on visitors socio-demographic characteristics than their trip characteristics. IFE Psychologia (2003) 11(2), 160-177