Fuzzy Modelling of Tourist Motivation: An Age-Related Model for Sustainable, Multi-Attraction, Urban Destinations

Miroslav D Vujičić,Ivana Štajner Papuga,Djordjije A Vasiljević,James Kennell,Alastair Morrison,Viachaslau Filimonau,Uglješa Stankov

doi:10.3390/su12208698

Miroslav D Vujičić, Ivana Štajner Papuga + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su12208698

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Abstract

Tourist motivation, as a core of travel behavior, significantly influences consumer intentions and has attracted academic attention for decades. A plethora of studies analyse sets of internal and external motivators, while methodologies that exclusively focus on a single factor, such as age, that can sometimes have a determining influence in multi-attraction destinations, are less prevalent. This study introduces a fuzzy logic approach to develop a new model for analysing the internal motivations of different-aged consumers in multi-attraction urban destinations. Fuzzy models, as a mathematical means of representing vagueness and imprecise information, have the capability of recognizing, representing, manipulating, interpreting, and utilizing data and information, which typically for urban tourist motivations, are vague and lack certainty. This research tests the model in a real-life setting, using the example of Novi Sad, a mid-sized European city, which is typical of many similar cities who are attempting to develop sustainable tourism by attracting older tourists. The new model shows how tourist motivations for multi-attraction destinations are affected by age, through a specially developed m-file for MATLAB, so that it can be applied and tested in other tourism contexts. Theoretical and practical implications for sustainable destination management and marketing are described.

Highlights

Tourist motivation can be regarded as the essence of travel behaviour since it significantly drives behavioural intentions [1,2]
The tested intellectual factors were defined by eight items (Table 1), which are represented by the Age Dependent (AD) matrix columns, while rows are represented by different age intervals, formed into five groups (Table 2)
Most of the previous empirical research on motivation is focused on push and pull theory, but it has rarely considered the complex relationship between tourist motivation and age

Summary

Introduction

Tourist motivation can be regarded as the essence of travel behaviour since it significantly drives behavioural intentions [1,2]. Many cities have sought to diversify their tourism offer away from high-volume, low value tourism [8,9], and to attract older tourists, who they believe will be more responsible visitors who can make a more positive contribution to sustainable development. Strategies to achieve this have included: product diversification and development, especially involving cultural heritage tourism, marketing and de-marketing campaigns aimed at changing the demographic composition of visitors, and traditional destination management techniques such as dispersal and public information campaigns aimed at changing tourist behaviour. The success of these attempts has been well-researched in terms of issues such as carrying capacity [10], smart tourism [11], and marketing [12], the motivations of different age groups of tourists to these types of multi-attraction destinations have not been the subject of inquiry in this context

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