Do They All Speak the Same Language? a Motivation–benefit Model Toward Cultural Experiences for English-speaking Tourists

Abstract

Understanding tourism behavior is fundamental to tourism marketing, and cross-cultural influences are particularly relevant. Therefore, in understanding of tourist motivation toward cultural experiences, this study offers an integrated motivational process model adapted from the leisure literature to extend the theoretical and empirical evidence of relevant constructs and relationships between them. From the tourism literature, a new motivation–benefit model of four psychological dispositions relevant to cultural experiences is proposed and tested: attitudes, motives, benefits sought, and benefits gained. Using four English-speaking tourist market samples from the psychically close Anglo cluster, the research model investigates relationships between the four constructs, applying a structural equation modeling approach. Cross-cultural differences are then tested for the geographic tourist markets as influences on the motivational process model. In the study context, these tourist markets take on an additional significance with one group of domestic tourists and three groups of international tourists. By applying a data set for tourists from the Anglo cluster using a repeat-measurement method, their previously identified psychic closeness is tested as well as further differences that could be expected between the domestic and the international tourists. The model is supported for these tourists, but with significantly weaker attitudes and motives for New Zealand tourists.