Measuring Spiritual Tourism Management in Community: A Case Study of Sri Chom Phu Ongtu Temple, Thabo district, Nongkhai Province, Thailand

Abstract

The paper is designed to provide a quantitative measuring spiritual tourism management in community in Sri Chom Phu Ongtu Temple, Thabo district, Nongkhai province, Thailand. The purpose of this study is to develop the spiritual tourism management model. Particularly, the objective of this study is to examine the validity and reliability of the three-factor model in spiritual tourism management. The research mainly involves a survey design. It includes a pilot test using undergraduate business students at UdonThani Rajabhat University for pretesting questionnaire items. In addition, this investigates into community potentiality, attraction potentiality, and community cooperation attributes necessitates uncovering variables of interest and this involves a large-scale field study. The data are collected via personal questionnaires from 459 samples. They include the residents in Thabo district, Nongkhai province, Thailand. Respondents are asked to rate, on a five-point Likert scale, their agreement or disagreement on the spiritual tourism management attributes. LISREL program is used for data analysis since the proposed model is a simultaneous system of equations having latent constructs and multiple indicators. Quantitative data are analyzed by the statistical techniques, namely exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. It is found from the study that the spiritual tourism consists of community potentiality, attraction potentiality, and community cooperation. The managerial implications are discussed.