define tourism motivation

Travel Motivation

There is always a motive behind everything happens in this world. Always there is a motivation in doing any work or anything. There are mainly two factors in behind happening anything it may be pull factors or push factors. In tourism, behind the movement of tourist there are various motives, it may may be leisure, business, pilgrimage or any other.

As we know tourism is a people centric and one of the fastest growing industry. Assessing behavior and motivations of tourist is a critical task as travel decisions of tourist depends on it. Travel has been a nomadic urge in human earlier in quest of food. As humanity grows desire for shelter came into being and with the rises of civilization search of trade bundles with safety and security. The game changing moment for mass tourism comes with the rise of leisure time. Assessing motivations of tourist is a critical task as travel decisions of tourist depends on it.

Motivation is an intrinsic property of a human-being that arises from the inside or of psychological origin. A combination of internal and external forces that motivates to drive the tourism industry. To satisfy all the levels of needs such psychological, physiological, etc. humans travels. It tells of tourist attempt to satisfy their recognized need and strongly influence decisions made by tourist in every steps of decision. Various theories have been developed to reveal the most important question why people travel?

The answer to this question is influenced by the nature of the travel motives.

4.  Types of Motivation  

Motivation can be classified into categories:  

1.  Intrinsic Motivation:  

this type of motivation comes from the inside through the core of the heart and mind of the tourist to do any specific work. t is defined as the performing of an activity for its intrinsic motivation that emerges from an individual’s inherent satisfactions, enjoyment, challenge entailed, interest or the feeling of inner pleasure that drives from the task rather than for some external pressures, or rewards or any separable consequence.

2. Extrinsic Motivation:  

  All the external factors which tends and individual to do any specific work. Individuals performs certain activities in order to attain or receive something from the outcomes. It involves executing an action influenced by the outer stimuli, to attain an external reinforcements or rewards from others such as money, praise, status etc.

Travel Motivation Theories

The tourist selecting to travel for business, leisure, pilgrimage, adventure or for other reasons, depends on motivation to visit destination. There are some common factors influencing tourist travel decisions such as 

•      Availability free time

•      Disposable income

•      Age and status

•      Attractiveness of destinations

A. Gray’s Travel-Motivation Theory .

 Gray explains the motivation of individual and given two motives for travel:

Wanderlust:   

It describes the motive or the desire to go from a known to an unknown place. It is travelling from or leaving a familiar places to go and see different or unfamiliar places. It is about going to different destinations to experience monumental and socio-cultural heritage.

It is a type of travel to a destination that can provide the tourist with specific facilities or better amenities. It is travelling for particular purpose or facilities that are not available in place of residence of the tourist.

B. McIntosh and Goeldner Categorization of Travel Motivation 

McIntosh has stated that basic travel motivators may be grouped into four broad categories:  

1. Physical Motivators 

These types of motivation are concerned with the individual physical health and well-being involves physical relaxation and rest, sporting activities, medical care or treatment and specific remedial health management. It include physical motivators that are concern with health from recreation to attending yoga camp to medical treatment for upkeep of health. 

2.Interpersonal Motivators   

Human are social animal and always keen to make new friends, have a desire to visit and meet relatives and friends, or simply want to escape from the daily hassles of everyday life. These type of motivators are termed as interpersonal motivators.

3.Cultural Motivators

Cultural motivators are describe as curiosity that tourists have and want to experience different people’s cultures and lifestyle. These are related with tourists desire to travel to different destination, in order to know about other countries, people, their culture, tradition, life style, art, music etc.

4.Status and Prestige Motivators    

Tourists travel to secure respect among their friends or in family and recognition of education and knowledge or for pursuit of hobbies. These types of motivators are identified with the need for fame and status or of personal esteem and personal development. It also include travel for business or professional interests. 

C. Anomie and Ego Enhancement Motivation Theory

            Dann investigated two push factors and proposes that motivational factors can be grouped into anomie and ego enhancement. 

Anomie refers to the need and desire to rise above the feeling of loneliness and quarantine inherent in everyday life and to get away from daily hassles. It is associated with search for life’s meaning and interaction with family and friends and social communication. The anomic tourists are mainly young, married, male mostly repeat visitors. They are from urban and rural areas and are above-average socio-economic status.

2.Ego enhancement  

Ego-enhancement tourists are the opposite end of spectrum. It derived from desire and need for recognition. The individual’s desire and need for social recognition is mainly associated with it and is achieved through the status or ego enhance conferred by travel. Ego-enhancement tourists are likely to be female, married or single mostly first-time visitors. They are older than anomic tourists and typically from lower socio-economic group. 

Dann argues that push factors are logically, and often an antecedent to pull factors. The question that  ‘what makes tourists travel’  can only be recognized through the push factors. As the tourist to take two different difficult decisions at two diverse times i.e. “whether to go” and “where to go”. 

D. Push and Pull Theory

Crompton identified two different levels of socio-psychological motivation. The first level of motivation is the desire to travel, that drives the initial decision for a trip or a vacation. It subsequently facilitates individual’s decision for destination. The second level of motivation drives the decision of selection of destinations. After the initial decision for making a trip, various motivation factors comes into being that impact the selection of destination. Crompton proposes two groups of motives among pleasure vacationers, one that push for a trip or tour are socio-psychological motives, while another factors that pull are cultural motives. 

1.Push Factors.   

Push factors are those factors which motivate people to travel. Push factors are initiating travel desire of an individual to engage in recreational activities or tourism. .Push factors are the inner motives which tends tourists to seek activities for needs fulfillment. Some push factors of travelling are:

•      Exploration and evaluation of self.

•      Escape from a perceived mundane environment.

•      Relaxation.

•      Health and fitness.

•      Re-experiencing family.

•      Facilitation of social interaction.

•      Enhancement of kinship relationships.

•      Novelty.

•      Cultural experiences.

•      Education.

•      Prestige.

2.Pull Factors 

All the external factors that pulls or attracts and individual towards some specific things or any destination. Pull factors appear due to the attractiveness and the attributes associated with the destination. It is related to the external condition, cognitive aspects or choices available on a destination such as attractions, climate, culture etc. Everyone has unique taste and choices which attract or pull individuals experience the destination. Identifying a set of pull factors that can be applicable to all sites is possible as different destinations have different or unique set of pull factors. 

Pull factors were characterized by  facilities ,  core attractions  and  landscape features .

•      The  facilities factor  encompasses all tourism facilities of a destination including fooding, lodging, roads, hospitality and security. 

•      The  core attractions  factor includes all those activities and services available for tourism. It includes sports activities, night life, entertainment and amusement and shopping facilities. 

•      The  landscape features  pull factor strongly relates to the geographical and sociocultural features of destination i.e. natural and cultural environment of destination. 

E. Escaping and Seeking Motivation of Mannell and Iso-Ahola

Mannell and Iso-Ahola   defined the motivation in socio psychological perspective. A two-dimensional model of tourist motivation where both the forces simultaneously influence tourists’ behaviour. The theory consists of both personal and interpersonal escape & seeking motives together. An individual perceive that satisfaction can be feel from leisure related activities, for two major reasons 

Escaping  – the desire to get out from the monotonous environment of work.

Seeking  – the aspiration to get intrinsic psychological rewards from other or self through traveling 

Tourist are motivated for leisure or tourism related activities in order to get away from the personal and/or interpersonal problems of day to day hustle and bustle of life and get personal and/or interpersonal rewards from passive and active tourism activities.

Personal rewards  are more about individual satisfaction includes exploration and relaxation; learning, challenge, a sense of competence etc.

Interpersonal rewards  are arising from social interaction with family and friends or with other people in destination.

Intrinsic rewards  arise from the activity that provide certain feelings, such as a feeling of mastery and escape from the monotonous environment. 

F. Travel Career Ladder (TCL)

The travel career ladder approach was proposed by Pearce. The approach is based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory of motivation. 

Following Maslow theory, the proposed model sees the needs of travelers is organized into a hierarchy or ladder model. Biological needs including relaxation at the foundation level, followed by safety needs and relationships needs, and in line selfesteem and development needs, and fulfillment needs at the highest level.  

The model identified five steps of hierarchy affecting tourist behaviour. It suggests that a group of needs in the ladder steps or level can be dominant at a particular time but travel motivation of tourist may derive from the different level of ladder. It emphasizes all the motives for traveling of a tourist, rather than a single motive. TCL proposes that every individual or tourist headway upward through hierarchy levels with accumulated travel experience and psychologically maturity. 

This shows that travel motivation changes as tourist acquire experiences in tourism developmental and dynamic motivations process. An individual can descend or ascend on the ladder as the direction of the change in level may vary with the experience. Some individuals may undergo every steps or level on either side of the model or may ascend the ladder on one side of the schema. Each individual every time not seek the similar type of experience or fulfillment from travel.  For example: First time visitor may be more cautious of safety and security then repeat visitor due more knowledge and experience about the destination or of trip. 

G. Travel Career Pattern (TCP)

The TCP model is modification of the earlier Travel Career Ladder (TCL) approach. The TCP emphasis on motivations patterns of tourist over their life cycle because of different motivation and its impact on their travelling experience. Travel experience plays a driver role for changing travel motivations which has crucial part in

TCP model. Travel experience is the collective changes in an individual’s perspective about self and environment due to tourism activities and events that individual passes through in course of travelling. 

Pearce suggested three layers of travel motivation:

Layer 1-  It is the core of the TCP and includes common motives such as escape, relaxation, health and fitness, social interaction etc. 

Layer 2-  It comprises series of moderately important motivators that surround core layer of motivations. It related to self-actualization and interaction of guest with the host society and environment. 

Layer 3-  The outer layer of model embraces motives with lesser importance such as social status and nostalgia.

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• Published: 04 March 2024

The impact of push-pull motives on internal tourists’ visit and revisit intentions to Egyptian domestic destinations: the mediating role of country image

• Doaa Ayoub   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2275-0510 1   na1 &
• Dina Nasser Hassan Sayed Mohamed 1   na1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  358 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Purpose -The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the push motivational factors (rest & relaxation, enhancing the ego, and novelty & knowledge-seeking) and pull motivational factors (tourism facilities, environment & safety, and cultural & historical attraction) on internal tourists’ visit and revisit intentions to a domestic destination in Egypt. It also tested the mediation role of the country image in the relationship between the independent variables (push & pull motives) and the dependent variables (visit & revisit intentions). This study provides novelty for the context of travel motivation, especially in a global crisis like Corona and highlight the limited literature regarding the Arab context, especially Egypt. Data were collected using an online survey of internal tourists to test the proposed model empirically using structured questions. Structural equation model (SEM) was developed to test the research hypotheses with a sample of 349. The findings indicate that all the research hypotheses were statistically supported, except for the associations between rest-and-relaxation, tourism facilities and the internal tourists’ visit intention to a destination in Egypt.

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Introduction.

The academics of tourism have shown considerable interest in travel motivation, and how travel motivation is considered a useful approach to comprehend tourists’ needs and motives. They even propositioned the complexity of investigating why tourists intend to travel and what they want to indulge or enjoy (Yoon and Uysal, 2005 ). Many disciplines have been considered to explain the travel motivation phenomena, and accordingly it has been investigated by many academics from various fields, namely anthropology, sociology, and psychology fields (Mohammad and Som, 2010 ; Yoon and Uysal, 2005 ; Gnoth, 1997 ; Dann, 1977 ). Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs have been highly utilised as the most famous and well-known theory within the travel motivation literature, displaying the basic human needs at the bottom of the pyramid to its way up to the least pressing needs (Negrusa and Yolal, 2012 ). Therefore, the hierarchy of Maslow can be seen as the theoretical basis and background for travel motivation studies.

Travel motivation theory has been examined and investigated till it is generally accepted, which is the push and pull motives (Dann, 1981 ; 1977 ). Previously, different studies have addressed and utilised the push and pull motives in the context of tourism motivation, and hence they were seen as relevant independents or predictors to be used for comprehending why tourists intend to travel, and integrating their behaviours (Correia et al., 2013 ; Jarvis and Blank, 2011 ; Mohammad and Som, 2010 ). Yousefi and Marzuki ( 2015 ), Negrusa and Yolal ( 2012 ), Mohammad and Som ( 2010 ), and Yoon and Uysal ( 2005 ) identified the push factors as the forces that motivate and induce individuals to go away from their home; while the pull factors are the externalities of a specific place/destination that pull individuals to visit this destination. Furthermore, Seebaluck et al. ( 2015 ) supported that push-pull motivational factors can integrate well with the hierarchy of Maslow. Thus, such an integration between the most well-known theory (Maslow’s theory) and the generally accepted theory (push-pull motives) will help to better comprehend the travel motivation and behaviours of tourists.

The dimensions that this paper focuses on and investigates for the push motives are: rest and relaxation, enhancing the ego, and novelty and knowledge-seeking. While the pull motives are the following dimensions: tourism facilities, environment and safety, and cultural and historical attractions. These dimensions were mentioned by and taken from Yousefi and Marzuki ( 2015 ). Moreover, this study concentrates on internal tourism, meaning that it considers the travel activities of those who are resident in the country of reference and non-residents visitors to the country of reference, as part of either their domestic or international tourism trips, respectively. In the same vein, it is also because many studies were focusing on either investigating residents visiting an outbound country only or investigating international tourists visiting a country of reference only (Baniya and Paudel, 2016 ; Yousefi and Marzuki, 2015 ; Mohammad and Som, 2010 ; Huang, 2010 ; Jang and Cai, 2002 ). Thus, this research paper provides novelty to the travel motivation context especially in global crisis such as Corona.

Country image plays an essential role in getting the interest and attention of travellers to visit a city of reference. It is considered the sum of impressions collected by a person about a specific destination or place (Gallarza et al. 2002 ). Doosti et al. ( 2016 ) highlighted the fact that country image is not only a good predictor in determining traveller’s visit intention but also their re-visit intention, because it influences travellers’ decision-making process for both, namely the visit and re-visit intentions. Therefore, this paper utilises the country image role as a mediator between the first relationship of the push-pull motivational factors and visit intention, and between the second association of the push-pull motives and re-visit intention. Hence, adding contribution to the tourism context.

Although studies regarding the travel motivation context have been covered excessively, focusing on the overseas countries like: Japan, Australia, North America, Canada, West Germany, France, the UK, and many regions across Asia (Hsu et al., 2009 ; Rittichainuwat, 2008 ; Kim and Prideaux, 2005 ; Oh et al., 1995 ; Uysal and Jurowski, 1994 ; Yuan and McDonald, 1990 ), Mohammad and Som ( 2010 ) highlighted the lack of information and limited literature regarding the Arab context that is why they studied Jordon as one of the Arabic countries. As a result, this research concentrates on Egypt in specific as a very promising country when it comes to tourism. Tourism in Egypt is considered a very crucial factor from the many essential factors that takes an extremely huge role in the growth of the economic development, and accordingly if tourism recovers, Egypt will recover in return (World Tourism Organisation UNWTO, 2016 ). Egypt is considered one of the top safest countries, according to Gallup’s 2018 Global Law and Order Report, coming in the 10th place for being safe for not only the local residents, but also for international tourists visiting Egypt. This survey showed that Egypt is being tied up with Denmark, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Austria, China, and Netherlands by scoring 88 out of 100, indicating its low crime rate (CNN Travel, 2018 ). A year later, Egypt escalated up to the 8th place, outranking multiple European countries, the USA, and the UK by scoring 92 out of 100, indicating its sense of personal safety and faith in law enforcement according to Gallup’s 2019 Global Law and Order Report (GALLUP, 2019 , P.12; Egyptian Streets, 2019 ).

Egypt is considered one of the countries that attracts many tourists to visit annually. The number of international tourists arriving to Egypt annually from the period ranges from (2007) to (2019) has escalated as reported by The World Bank ( 2023 ). Even during the pandemic (Covid-19) that disrupted the economy so hard worldwide, Egypt was regarded as one of the few emerging countries that showed resilience towards the pandemic, experiencing growth in 2020, and maintaining a positive GDP growth in 2021 (International Monetary Fund, 2021 ). Although such a pandemic influenced the entire world in 2020, but Egypt was able to hold onto its position as a top destination for tourists, this is due to the Egyptian government’s active response and short-period lockdown. As a result, Egypt led Africa in terms of tourists’ arrivals, reporting around 3.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2020 (Statista, 2022a ). In 2021, Egypt ranked the first to have the largest number of tourists visiting the country among the rest of the African countries, reporting 3.67 million tourists (Statista, 2022b ). Ultimately, Egypt ranked the highest in the 2021 Competitiveness Index of Travel and Tourism among the African Countries, scoring 4.2 (Statista, 2022c ). Thus, showing such a high score of resilience will contribute to Egypt’s development (World Economic Forum, 2022 ).

This paper aims to investigate the impact of push motives (rest and relaxation, enhancing the ego, and novelty and knowledge-seeking) and pull motives (tourism facilities, environment and safety, and cultural and historical attractions) on internal tourists’ visit and revisit intentions to a domestic destination in Egypt. It also tests the country image and its mediation role in the relationship between the independent variables (push-pull motives) and the dependent variables (visit and revisit intentions). This study provides novelty for the context of travel motivation, especially in a global crisis like Corona. Afterwards, the study’s objective is to assess the impact of the push and pull motivational factors on internal tourists’ visit and revisit intentions to a domestic destination in Egypt. On that basis, the following section presents the literature related to this study.

Literature review

Tourism, internal tourism, and tourists.

Caldito et al. ( 2015 ) identified tourism as a global and universal economic activity, which advocates and supports the socio-economic developments and processes within the countries, territories, or provinces where they are developed. The United Nations ( 2010 , P.1) and the World Tourism Organisation UNWTO ( n.d. ) considered tourism in different phenomena such as social, cultural, as well as economical. Tourism entails the transfer and movement of individuals to different places or countries that are regarded to be outside the individuals’ own usual and normal environment for one purpose or more purposes (World Tourism Organisation UNWTO, n.d. ), including professional purposes, leisure purposes, or even personal ones (United Nations, 2010 , P.10). On that basis, internal tourism is the comprising of both, namely the domestic and in-bound tourism (World Tourism Organisation UNWTO, n.d. ). The internal tourism is considered the activities of both, resident as well as non-resident visitors, as part of either domestic tourism trips or international tourism trips within the country of reference (United Nations, 2010 , P.15). Accordingly, tourists are those individuals who leave voluntarily their usual environment and go-to surroundings where they used to live and work, integrating and participating in various activities despite of the destination being close or far-away, as conformed by Camilleri ( 2017 ).

Travel motivation

Travel motivation has gained the attention and interest of many researchers in various research, studies, and fields. It has also showed its importance in different contexts of comprehending well travellers’ behaviours and intentions (Baniya and Paudel, 2016 ). Motivation can stimulate an action, and in that sense, it is considered the person’s psychological as well as internal forces which in sequence can spur that action (Armstrong and Kotler, 2013 ). Due to this action that is being stimulated, then it can satisfy a specific need (Li et al., 2015 ). This elucidates that for these actions to be stimulated, the person must have from the beginning some psychological or what is so called biological needs and wants. The existence of these needs and wants will start directly and immediately to motivate the person, and in return some behaviours and activities will be integrated (Negrusa and Yolal, 2012 ). Indeed, individual’s motivation is like a collection of driving forces that in return can conciliate performing and carrying out specific actions that can be induced by the person who is being motivated (Sandybayev et al., 2018 ). In line with that, Chang et al. ( 2014 ) clarified that tourists will tend to participate, engage, and integrate in a specific behaviour, however that integration or participation is due to being motivated based on some reasons, forces, or even goals. Jarvis and Blank ( 2011 ) challenged that it is not necessary that all tourists will be motivated by the same motives or forces, as that way might cause many problems if tourists to be treated the same exact way. Understanding and comprehending well individual’s motives is the most important key for designing offerings and tailoring them to suit the targeted markets (Negrusa and Yolal, 2012 ; Park et al., 2008 ).

Negrusa and Yolal ( 2012 ) defined motivation as an initiator for the everyday individual’s decision-making process. It is considered what affects people’s choices through internal and psychological influences. This agrees with Banner and Himmelfarb (1985 as cited in Jarvis and Blank, 2011 ), supporting that tourism is solely based on the voluntary motivation (intrinsic force), leaving behind the extrinsic motivation. Getz ( 2008 ) agreed to some extent with what addressed earlier regarding the voluntary motivation, supporting that it is well-established compared to the extrinsic motivation. Hence, this clarifies the lack of support towards the extrinsic force that requires more comprehension and understanding when it comes to the tourism motivation (Jarvis and Blank, 2011 ). However, other researchers argued the above and addressed a different perspective, Seebaluck et al. ( 2015 ) stated that travel motivation is a combination of both, namely intrinsic and extrinsic factors, and accordingly these factors can stimulate the desire for travelling and visiting a specific destination in mind and that tourists can satisfy concurrently many distinctive needs and wants, instead of pleasing/delighting one need only. This agrees with what has been addressed by Mohammad and Som ( 2010 ), that the forces/factors of travel motivation can be seen as a multi-dimensional concept. Nevertheless, travel motivation does not only look very interesting topic for marketers to better understand tourist’s motives/forces as stated earlier, but according to Chang et al. ( 2014 ), they addressed that it can also explore and understand the reasons behind why an individual intends to travel. Due to this perplexity on how to define or even describe travel motivation, then it is being referred to as a “Fuzzy Set” according to Kay ( 2003 as cited in Jarvis and Blank, 2011 ). To put it differently, despite that travel motivation may appear as a very interesting topic for many researchers, however it is a hard and dynamic concept in the tourism field/context (Chang et al., 2014 ; Mohammad and Som, 2010 ).

Travel motivation theories

By reviewing the previous literatures regarding the travel motivation, many well-known theories and frameworks were presented. These frameworks were widely used as a guide to many research studies of tourism motivation, explaining and identifying the behaviour of tourists (Sandybayev et al., 2018 ; Li et al., 2015 ; Negrusa and Yolal, 2012 ). These theories are Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs (Maslow, 1943 ; 1954 , P.2), Travel Career Pattern (Pearce, 1988 , P.31), and Escape-Seeking Model (Ross and Iso-Ahola, 1991 ). They are followed then by the Push and Pull Motives (Dann, 1981 ; 1977 ), which are considered the focus of this paper.

First, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, which is arranged in a hierarchical-composure from tackling first the most essential human-being needs to the least pressing needs. Simply put, when a person tends to fulfil and satisfy one need, then he/she will be motivated to satisfy and delight the next upcoming need (Sandybayev et al., 2018 ; Pearce and Packer, 2013 ; Negrusa and Yolal, 2012 ; Maslow, 1943 ). According to Pearce and Packer ( 2013 ) and Mohammad and Som ( 2010 ), the hierarchy of Maslow is considered the most applied framework to contribute to studying, exploring, and identifying travel motivation. Second is the Travel Career Pattern or what is merely known by Sandybayev et al. ( 2018 ) and Li et al. ( 2015 ) as the Travel Career Ladder. Travel Career Pattern showed pivotal contribution into the travel motivation literature, identifying the existence of the multiplicity of forces. In other words, it means that tourists will not be motivated by one dominant motive only, but by multiple forces, and accordingly this shows that travel motivation can be identified in patterns of multiple forces all together (Pearce and Packer, 2013 ; Jarvis and Blank, 2011 ). Additionally, a dynamic approach can be recommended to this framework. This is because of its multiplicity of forces that can be recognised in not only tourists in the tourism context, but also in people in any social ones, confirming that this framework can be effective in any motivation context (Jarvis and Blank, 2011 ).

Third is the Escapism-Seeking Model. It showed a great influence on the leisure behaviour of an individual, suggesting that escaping and seeking are the two leading and master motives that affects simultaneously individuals’ motives for leisure activities (Ross and Iso-Ahola, 1991 ). Negrusa and Yolal ( 2012 ) also explained that seeking activities are sought in trying and discovering novel and new things or places; and mainly for fulfilling the self and acquiring psychological rewards. While for the escape, it refers to the fleeing from the daily stressful environment, difficulties, and the tedious routine of life. The last theory that this study will tackle is the Push-Pull Framework. This is not the last theory when it comes to the travel motivation theories and context, it is considered the main focus of this paper.

Push and pull motives

Push and Pull motives are considered the main constructs of this study. Sandybayev et al. ( 2018 ), Li et al. ( 2015 ), and Negrusa and Yolal ( 2012 ) identified the push motives as the forces that induce individuals to go away from home. While the pull motives are the forces that pull individuals to visit a specific destination, it is the destination’s external attractions. Push and Pull motives were addressed before in various research studies, and they were seen as relevant and effective constructs to be used as a starting point for explaining why tourists intend to travel, alongside identifying their behaviours. Many researchers showed their agreement regarding these factors due to their utilisation in several tourism motivation literatures, and accordingly this concept is considered generally accepted (Dean and Suhartanto, 2019 ; Correia et al., 2013 ; Jarvis and Blank, 2011 ). Apart from this, Seebaluck et al. ( 2015 ) encouraged that the Push and Pull motives can integrate well with the above addressed theory, which is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. Likewise, Jarvis and Blank ( 2011 ) supported that the Push-Pull motives can be adjusted by its integration with the Escapism-Seeking Model. Therefore, this shows the integration between the theories with each other to better understanding the travel motivation and behaviours.

Push motives

Push factors are considered the factors or forces that can prompt, motivate, and encourage tourists to go to a specific destination. It has also been referred to as the socio-psychological needs (Seebaluck et al., 2015 ), intangible elements or intrinsic factors (Isa and Ramli, 2014 ). These factors push tourists to travel as a way of escapism from the home-surrounding environment, daily tedious routine, and the hassle of everyday life. Hence, tourists consider that these forces can spur them to travel as a way of recharging their batteries once again; and to relax (Dunne et al., 2011 ). Ultimately, push factors are what push tourists to escape, have social interactions, and to be novelty-seekers and adventurous (Yousefi and Marzuki, 2015 ; Seebaluck et al., 2015 ; Isa and Ramli, 2014 ; Mohammad and Som, 2010 ). Several researchers also suggested other push factors that can stimulate tourists to travel and visit a specific place in mind which are: psychological health and fitness (Sandybayev et al., 2018 ; Isa and Ramli, 2014 ), knowledge (Yousefi and Marzuki, 2015 ), ego-enhancement (Seebaluck et al., 2015 ), and self-exploratory (Negrusa and Yolal, 2012 ; Mohammad and Som, 2010 ).

Jang and Cai ( 2002 ) studied the push-pull motives of British travellers and identified that knowledge-seeking was perceived as the most important push motive. Correspondingly, novelty-seeking was perceived as the core travel motivation factor that pushed Chinese visitors to travel to Hong Kong (Huang, 2010 ). This also agrees with the findings of Sangpikul ( 2009 ), discovering that the most perceived push dimensions to push Asians and Europeans to Thailand were novelty-seeking and escape and relaxation. This is similar to the results of Chen et al. ( 2023 ) study and Teng et al. ( 2023 ) study. Based on the above, this research will concentrate on the following push dimensions mentioned by Yousefi and Marzuki ( 2015 ), namely rest and relaxation, enhancing the ego, and novelty and knowledge seeking. Thus, the below hypotheses are formulated:

H1 : The push-dimension impacts internal tourists’ visit intention to a domestic destination in Egypt.

H1-1: Rest and relaxation impact internal tourists’ visit intention to a domestic destination in Egypt.

H1-2: Enhancing the ego impacts internal tourists’ visit intention to a domestic destination in Egypt.

H1-3: Novelty and knowledge seeking impact internal tourists’ visit intention to a domestic destination in Egypt.

Pull motives

Pull factors are considered the externalities of a destination that can attract tourists to travel and contribute to their desire of visiting this place. Simply speaking, pull factors come from the destination itself, what is external to tourists (Seebaluck et al., 2015 ). Pull factors are related and linked to the cognitive or situational aspects of motivation, as a way of example, destination’s landscape, hospitality, image, publicity, facilities, branding, climate, features, promotions, and marketing (Seebaluck et al., 2015 ; Correia et al., 2013 ). According to Dunne et al. ( 2011 ), the allure and fascinating attraction of the triple S or what is so called the 3’S (Sea, Sun, and Sand) are the most relevant when it comes to vacation decision-making. Some intangible and tangible elements are also included in the pull motives, for instance, biodiversity (the variety of life that has existence on earth), rivers, as well as beaches (Seebaluck et al., 2015 ). Yousefi and Marzuki ( 2015 ) argued that other factors like: destination’s heritage and historical sites, cultural appeal and charms, destination’s security, natural reserves, and safety and cleanliness of the place are regarded as externalities of a destination that can pull and attract tourists. Similarly, Seebaluck et al. ( 2015 ) added that flexibility, resilience of travelling, and travel costs are also externalities of a destination that can contribute to the traveller’s desire of visiting the destination in mind.

Jang and Cai ( 2002 ) studied the push-pull motives of British travellers and identified that cleanliness and safety were perceived as the most important pull motives. Conversely, another study found that touristic activities, attractions, and travel costs were the most considered pull factors by Asian travellers visiting Thailand, whereas European travellers were pulled by the cultural, historical attractions, touristic activities and attractions (Sangpikul, 2009 ). Based on the above, this research will concentrate on the following pull dimensions mentioned by Yousefi and Marzuki ( 2015 ), namely tourism facilities, environment and safety, and cultural and historical attractions. Therefore, the below hypotheses are formulated:

H2 : The pull-dimension impacts internal tourists’ visit intention to a domestic destination in Egypt.

H2-1: Tourism facilities impact internal tourists’ visit intention to a domestic destination in Egypt.

H2-2: Environment and safety impact internal tourists’ visit intention to a domestic destination in Egypt.

H2-3: Cultural and historical attraction impact internal tourists’ visit intention to a domestic destination in Egypt.

Mediation role: Country image

Seaton and Benett (1996 as cited in Doosti et al., 2016 ) and Fakeye and Crompton ( 1991 ) defined country image as the mental construction of city portrayal. Doosti et al. ( 2016 ) also added that country image is being constructed based on the understanding of the characteristics of the country/city. Ultimately, it is how tourists perceive the city and the overall set of impressions and beliefs of the country/city, which is mainly developed from the collection of information from multiple sources formed over the time, as a way of example, through tourists’ exposure to the TV, magazines, any non-tourism information, and touristic sources from advertisements to posters. Destination image is considered the visitors representation of the destination in their own minds, and such representation might include the climate, people of the city, or even the surrounding natural environment (Fakeye and Crompton, 1991 ).

Country’s image is very essential in attracting and getting the attention of tourists to visit the city (Kim and Lee, 2015 ). Avraham ( 2004 ) added that it also plays an essential role in improving and enhancing how people perceive this destination and its image. This agrees with Doosti et al. ( 2016 ) that improving the country’s image is affecting visitors’ visit intention positively as well as their decision-making process for a re-visit (future visitation intention). Stepchenkova and Morrison ( 2008 ) found that when US travellers had more willingness and intention to visit Russia, they had less negative image of Russia as the host country, and vice versa. This elucidates that enhancing the positive image of a destination can influence tourists’ visitation intentions. Likewise, Doosti et al. ( 2016 ) confirmed that city image is a significant predictor of visitors’ visitation intention when studying foreign visitors to Iran. Multiple studies also showed that positive country image can lead to revisit intentions too (Beerli and Martin, 2004 ; Gallarza et al., 2002 ). For instance, Kim and Lee ( 2015 ) showed that city image influenced positively the revisit intention of South Korean tourists to international cities.

H3 : Country image will mediate the relationship between travel motivation factors and visit/revisit intentions.

H3-1: Country image will mediate the relationship between travel push motivation factors and visit intention.

H3-2: Country image will mediate the relationship between travel pull motivation factors and visit intention.

H3-3: Country image will mediate the relationship between travel push motivation factors and revisit intention.

H3-4: Country image will mediate the relationship between travel pull motivation factors and revisit intention.

Visit intention and revisit intentions

Intention as a concept is considered a very broad subject and an interesting topic in consumer behaviour (Chekima et al., 2015 ). This triggered the interest of many marketers to study people’s intentions in different contexts (Goh et al., 2017 ; Chekima et al., 2015 ; Dunne et al., 2011 ; Han et al., 2010 ). In the tourism context, tourists’ visit intention is considered their subjective likelihood to engage in a certain behaviour (Chang et al., 2014 ). Additionally, visit intention is one of the steps of the travel/vacation decision-making process (Doosti et al., 2016 ), and accordingly it showed great significance in the recent years (Dunne et al., 2011 ). Martin and Woodside ( 2012 ) clarified that the travel decision making process is like a fickle and dynamic process, and it is characterised by having a series of unique and solitary, yet unstructured decisions. These decisions may be based on some unplanned or even unexpected events, including some decisions that can be inter-related that can drive an individual to the destination’s choice/selection and visitation intention. Accordingly, it is really hard to be able to predict or even explain the decision of a tourist/traveller, it is a complex phenomenon that still stimulates scholar’s curiosity and interest back in the old decades till nowadays (Dunne et al., 2011 ).

Chang et al. ( 2014 ) emphasised that tourists tend to participate and integrate in a specific behaviour after being motivated based on multiple and different reasons or even goals that need to be satisfied. This confirms that these behaviours are still hard for tourists to be explained. In line with that, Martin and Woodside ( 2012 ) stressed on keeping a sharp eye on the unconscious mind of tourists, because it can assist in interpreting the causal and associative processes that result in the selection, conclusions, and intentions/actions of tourists. Ultimately, intention is a good predictor of individuals’ behaviour, where it stimulates a person for a real commitment (Chekima et al., 2015 ). Ajzen ( 1991 ) also emphasised that intention is the best predictor when it comes to the actual commitment, since it can indicate the behaviour even if it is not deliberated or considered. On that basis, it is essential to comprehend the visit intention of tourists for the selected destination (Martin and Woodside, 2012 ), which will leave a room in the future to create successful touristic destination’s campaigns and businesses (Dunne et al., 2011 ).

As previously mentioned in the mediating role of the country image part, the relationship between city image and tourists’ visit intentions is significant, and according to Stepchenkova and Morrison ( 2008 ), they showed that enhancing the favourable image of a destination can impact tourists’ visit intention. This means that city image is a significant predictor of tourists’ visit intention (Doosti et al., 2016 ).

H4: There is significant positive relationship between country image and visit intention.

Repeating the visit to a specific place that an individual visited before is considered an essential phenomenon that needs to be considered in the tourism context (Wang, 2004 ). This is because it is more effective, in terms of the cost, to attract repeat travellers than new visitors (Chang et al., 2014 ). That is why many destinations might rely extensively on repeat travellers as emphasised by Um et al. ( 2006 ), clarifying that the cost to retain back the former group (e.g., repeat tourists) is less expensive compared with the new visitors. Additionally, it has been illustrated that repeat travellers tend to spend more, in terms of money, than first-time visitors (Chang et al., 2014 ; Lehto et al., 2004 ). For instance, when studying U.S. travellers to Canada, Meis, Joyal, and Trites ( 1995 ) showed that repeat travellers spend more across the whole duration of their travel-life cycle. Chang et al. ( 2014 ) also revealed that repeat tourists tend to stay longer compared to first-time ones. This is confirmed by Wang ( 2004 ) when he studied repeat visitation of Chinese travellers to Hong Kong. Intention is a good predictor of individuals’ behaviour, and accordingly it can promote for a real commitment. Likewise, traveller’s revisit intention is considered a good predictor of traveller’s future travel behaviour to a specific destination (Chang et al., 2014 ). Accordingly, this helps marketers and scholars to understand and predict tourist’s future commitment and behaviour (Ajzen and Driver, 1992 ).

As addressed earlier in the country image section, many research studies showed positive and significant relationship between city image and re-visit intentions (Beerli and Martin, 2004 ; Gallarza et al., 2002 ). Kim and Lee ( 2015 ) also agreed on this, showing that city image is significant in predicting the re-visit intention of South Korean visitors to international destinations/cities.

H5: There is significant relationship between country image and revisit intentions.

H6: Push-Pull motives have a positive influence on tourists’ revisit intentions.

The study analytical model

Based on the above literature reviewed, the relationships between the independent and dependent variables are presented in the below conceptual model (Fig. 1 ) of this research. This conceptual framework is going to discover which is the most push-dimension and the most pull-dimension, from the listed dimensions that this paper will tackle, that have a great influence on the visit intention of internal tourists to a domestic destination in Egypt (H1 and H2). It will also figure out the impact of the push-pull motives on the revisit intention of internal tourists to a domestic destination in Egypt (H6). In addition to the country image that positively mediates the relationship between push-pull dimensions and visit and re-visit intentions (H3, H4, and H5).

The figure shows the relationships between the push motivational factors (rest & relaxation, enhancing the ego, and novelty & knowledge-seeking) and pull motivational factors (tourism facilities, environment & safety, and cultural & historical attraction) on internal tourists’ visit and revisit intentions; the mediation role of the country image in the relationship between the independent variables (push & pull motives) and the dependent variables (visit & revisit intentions).

Methodology

The measurement of constructs.

The items’ relevance to measuring the variable was confirmed through a pilot study involving three experts. Subsequently, the study instruments underwent pretesting consisting of 30 participants to modify and refine items clarity of words and sentences, no changes were recommended based on the results. In March 2022, a self-administered questionnaire was disseminated in Cairo -capital city of Egypt. It included multiple sections to measure the independent, dependent, and mediator variable used in this research (Push-Pull motivational factors, visit and revisit intentions, and country image). In addition to the socio-demographic data collected to provide more information on the respondents’ profile.

The survey consisted of close-ended questions, and the Egyptian internal tourists (respondents of this study) were exposed to six sections: the first section designed to obtain general information on travel characteristics. The second section identified the push and pull travel motivations, where 19 push and 18 pull motivational items were presented. Questions were developed based on a comprehensive review of travel motivation past studies, where the items got selected and adapted from Yousefi and Marzuki ( 2015 ), Hsu and Huang ( 2008 ), Sangpikul ( 2009 ), Jang and Wu ( 2006 ), and Hanqin and Lam ( 1999 ). The third section obtained data on the country image, that was measured by four items adopted from Chi and Qu ( 2008 ), following the studies of Jalilvand and Samiei ( 2012 ) and Jalilvand et al. ( 2013 ). The fourth section obtained data on the visit intentions that was measured by four items scale adopted from Usakli and Baloglu ( 2011 ). These sections were presented in a statement format and assessed on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (means strongly disagree) to 5 (means strongly agree). Respondents were also exposed to the last two sections: the fifth section obtained data on the re-visit intentions, where respondents got asked to rate their revisit intentions to different destinations in Egypt. Three items were selected from Deslandes ( 2003 ) for their reliability and adapted to fit the context of this research. The sixth and last section obtained data on the socio-demographics, where respondents required to provide some personal details regarding their profile (like gender, age, marital status, income, occupation, educational level, travel companion, accommodation, and nationality).

Sampling and data collection

This study tests the hypotheses and research framework by means of questionnaire survey with an extensive literature review. The research object of this study is Egyptian internal tourists. The questionnaire was sent to the randomly selected consumers.

Due to the fact that the tourists’ segment in Egypt exceeds 1 million according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics -CAPMAS ( 2021 ); therefore, the sample size will be 384 respondents according to the Uma Sekaran table (Sekaran, 2003 ). In total, 385 responses were received, (70.2%) females and (29.8%) males. In total, 36 cases were deleted because of incomplete answers, which generated 349 usable responses to proceed for analysis, around (7.2%) are aged between 18 and 24 years, almost (31.2%) between 25 and 34, (36.7%) between 35 and 44, (20.9%) between 45 and 54, (3.4%) between 55 and 64, and (0.6%) above 64 years. This shows that younger generation are more involved in domestic tourism. In terms of education, around (4.9%) from Secondary/Diploma, (2.6%) earned High School degree, (33.8%) had an Undergraduate degree, and (58.7%) had a graduate degree. In terms of Job level, around (18.3%) were businessperson, (47.2%) were employees, (31%) were unemployed, and (3.5%) retired. In terms of travel companion, almost (62.5%) travel with family, around (24.9%) travel with friends, (4.6%) travel for work, around (4.9%) travel alone, and around (3.2%) travel with other companions. Regarding the marital status (7.2%) were single, (85.4%) were married, (6.6%) are widowed, and (0.9%) were divorced.

Statistical analysis and results

Table 1 indicates that the questionnaire is reliable as the Cronbach’s alpha and average inter-item correlation coefficient for all items greater than (0.7), ranging from 0.732 (ego-enhancement) to 0.811 (novelty and knowledge seeking), emphasising a good level of internal consistency (Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994 ). AVE value for all items greater than 0.5, ranging from 0.600 (revisit intention) to 6.83 (country image). AVE values above 0.50 are considered to be adequate (Hair et al., 2006 ).

Descriptive statistics of variables

From Table 2 , the average of all variables is between 3 and 4 which mean that respondents are tend to neutrally and agree to most of the statement that measure these variables. The variable with highest agreement is the novelty and knowledge seeking and country image while the variable with least agreement is the tourism facilities and environment and safety. As overall push dimensions have higher agreement than pull dimensions.

Correlation analysis

In this subsection the correlation analysis between the variables of the study is presented. From Table 3 below, it is clear that with confident (95%) that there is positive significant correlation between country image, visit intention, revisit intentions and each of push dimensions and pull dimensions, as the p value associated with them less than (5%). However, the correlation with push dimension is higher than the correlation with pull dimension.

ANOVA test results

The p value equals 0.000 which is significant (less than 0.05)as shown in Table 4 . This means that the proposed model predicts the dependent variable better than the intercept-only model (model with no predictors).

Coefficients summary

The following table (Table 5 ) summarise the included and excluded variables listed with significance and coefficients. The significance of the included variables is less than (0.05) which indicates that 4 variables out of 6 have significant influence on the visit intention, this with confident (95%). The significance of the excluded variables is greater than (0.05) which indicates that 2 variables out of 6 have no influence on the visit intention, with confident (95%).

Novelty and knowledge have significant positive impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%). The p value is 0.000 (less than 0.05) and β coefficient equals 0.393, which accept the alternative hypothesis (H1-3). Thus, novelty and knowledge have significant positive impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%), and controlling for other variables.

Ego-enhancement has significant positive impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%). The p value is 0.029 (less than 0.05) and β coefficient equals 0.153, which accept the alternative hypothesis (H1-2). Thus, Ego-enhancement has significant positive impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%), and controlling for other variables.

Rest and relaxation have insignificant impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%). The p value is 0.107 (larger than 0.05). Thus, rest and relaxation have insignificant impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%), and controlling for other variables which reject the alternative hypothesis (H1-1).

Cultural and historical attraction have significant positive impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%). The p value is 0.000 (less than 0.05) and βcoefficient equals 0.248, which accept the alternative hypothesis (H2-3). Thus, Cultural and historical attraction have significant positive impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%), and controlling for other variables.

Environment and safety have significant positive impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%). The p value is 0.048 (less than 0.05) and β coefficient equals 0.108, which accept the alternative hypothesis (H2-2). Thus, Environment and safety have significant positive impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%), and controlling for other variables.

Tourism facilities has insignificant impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%). The p value is 0.139 (larger than 0.05). Thus, tourism facilities have insignificant impact on visit intention, this with confident (95%), and controlling for other variables which reject the alternative hypothesis (H2-1).

From the standardised coefficient, the variable with highest effect on visit intention is Novelty and knowledge seeking.

Regression model summary

Table 6 shows that the Adjusted R 2 value of 0.989 indicates the fit of the model. The proposed model could infer 98.9% of the total variance in the visit intention.

From the value of Durbin Watson, there is no serial autocorrelation between residuals, as the value is near to 2. No serial auto correlation is one of the assumptions of the regression model.

Linearity assumption was checked to ensure that model results are reliable, from the graph below (Fig. 2 ) points are random then linearity satisfied.

The figure represents the linearity assumption. The linearity was checked to ensure that model results are reliable. The graph shows that points are random then linearity satisfied.

The H3, H4, H5, H6 hypotheses are answered using SEM and path analysis, then the following path model will be estimated as in Fig. 3 .

SEM is used to assess hierarchical relationship between some variables, as testing for mediating effect in a model.

From Table 7 , we can conclude that push dimension has insignificant effect on revisit intentions this with confident (95%) as p-value larger than (5%), then this path is removed, and the model will be estimated again.

Second and final step

The following table (Table 8 ) and path model (Fig. 4 ) present the results of the final estimated path model, and from it we can conclude that:

The results show that pull dimension and push dimension has direct positive impact on country image and this effect = 0.444, 0.078 respectively and this with confident (95%) as the p value associated with them is less than (5%).

Pull dimension and Push dimension has direct positive impact on country image and this effect = 0.444, 0.078 respectively and this with confident (95%) as the p-value associated with them is less than (5%).

Country image has direct positive impact on intention to visit and this effect = 0.374, and this with confident (95%) as the p value associated with them is less than (5%).

Country image has direct positive impact on revisit intentions and this effect = 0.406, and this with confident (95%) as the p value associated with them is less than (5%).

Pull dimension has direct positive impact on intention to visit and this effect = 0.394, and it has indirect positive impact on intention to visit through country image and this indirect effect  =   0.166 (0.444*0.374) , then country image mediate the relationship between pull dimension and visit intention, such that it strength this relationship, and this with confident (95%) as the p value associated with them is less than (5%).

Pull dimension has direct positive impact on revisit intentions and this effect = 0.480, and it has indirect positive impact on intention to revisit through country image and this indirect effect  =   0.180 (0.444*0.406) , then country image mediate the relationship between pull dimension and revisit intentions, such that it strength this relationship, and this with confident (95%) as the p value associated with them is less than (5%).

Push dimension has direct positive impact on intention to visit and this effect = 0.050, and it has indirect positive impact on intention to visit through country image and this indirect effect  =   0.029 (0.078*0.374) , then country image mediate the relationship between push dimension and visit intention, such that it strength this relationship, and this with confident (95%) as the p value associated with them is less than (5%).

Push dimension has insignificant impact on revisit intentions while it has indirect positive impact on revisit intentions through country image and this indirect effect  =   0.03167 (0.078*0.406) , then country image mediate the relationship between push dimension and revisit intentions, such that it strength this relationship, and this with confident (95%) as the p value associated with them is less than (5%).

SEM results

Regarding model in the above table, the researcher concluded that all the goodness of fit measures of the model indicates that all indicators at acceptable limits, especially NFI (0.948), RFI (0.039), IFI (0.951), TLI (0.943), and CFI (0.949) is close to one. Also, the value of RMSEA (0.034) is less than (0.05). All these measures indicate the goodness of fit of the structural model. Although the level of significance of the Chi-square test is less than (0.05) which indicate that the model is not good fit, but this is not an accurate result as Chi-square is very sensitive for large sample size so goodness of fit of the model is determined according to the above-mentioned indicators.

This research paper aimed to investigate the impact of the push motivational factors (rest and relaxation, enhancing the ego, and novelty and knowledge-seeking) and pull motivational factors (tourism facilities, environment and safety, and cultural and historical attraction) on internal tourists’ visit and revisit intentions to a domestic destination in Egypt. It also tested the mediation role of the country image in the relationship between the independent variables (push and pull motives) and the dependent variables (visit and revisit intentions). The hypotheses of this study were expected to be positive and significant. Indeed, positive and significant relationships were found, supporting H1-2, H1-3, H2-2, H2-3, H3-1, H3-2, H3-3, H3-4,H4, H5, and H6. However, other insignificant links were found too, especially H1-1 and H2-1.

The key findings, with the support from the past literature reviewed, showed that the relationships between enhancing the ego and visit intention (H1-2), and between novelty and knowledge-seeking and visit intention (H1-3) were positive and significant. This means that these push factors are indeed the core travel motivation factors that push and motivate internal tourists to visit a domestic destination in Egypt. The findings of this research agreed with the results of Chen et al. ( 2023 ), Dean and Suhartanto ( 2019 ), Jang and Cai ( 2002 ), Sangpikul ( 2009 ), and Huang ( 2010 ), who all supported that novelty-seeking and knowledge-seeking were perceived as the core and most important push motives for tourists. Ultimately, the findings of this study showed that the variable with the highest contribution on the visit intention is novelty and knowledge-seeking, reporting a standardised coefficient (Beta) value of (0.406). However, different results were found regarding the last push dimension, which is the rest and relaxation. The findings of this research regarding the impact of rest and relaxation on internal tourists’ visit intention to a domestic destination in Egypt (H1-1) was insignificant, and accordingly showed inconsistency with the results of Chen et al. ( 2023 ), Teng et al. ( 2023 ), and Sangpikul ( 2009 ), who argued that escape and relaxation have a positive significant impact on the visit intention as per the study of each. Therefore, H1-2 and H1-3 were met.

As predicted, significant and positive relationships were found between environment and safety and visit intention (H2-2), and between cultural and historical attraction and visit intention (H2-3), demonstrating that these pull dimensions are the core externalities of a destination that can attract internal tourists to visit a domestic destination in Egypt. The outcomes of this study agreed with the findings of Jang and Cai ( 2002 ), who confirmed that cleanliness and safety were perceived as the most important pull motives for British travellers. In addition to the consistency showed with the results of Sangpikul ( 2009 ), who supported that cultural and historical attraction were the core pull dimensions by Europeans visiting Thailand. Thus, H2-2 and H2-3 were supported.

Country image was expected to mediate positively the relationships between the visit intention and push and pull motives. The findings revealed that country image mediates positively the relationship between the push motives and visit intention (H3-1), and the association between the pull motives and visit intention (H3-2). Therefore, strengthening these associations as it mediates. Additionally, these interactions/links were also statistically significant since they were significant at ( P  < 0.05), as presented on the second and final step of the Regression Weights table under the analysis chapter, demonstrating these relationships with a 95% confidence level. Based on that, and as expected, a significant and positive association was found between country image and visit intention (H4). This illustrates that enhancing the country image can end up influencing positively, directly, and significantly tourist’s visit intention. Thus, the findings of this study aligned with the results of Stepchenkova and Morrison ( 2008 ), who found that the tourists with more favourable image of Russia as the host country, the more intention and willingness they get to visit Russia. Likewise, the results showed consistency with the outcomes of Doosti et al. ( 2016 ) while studying foreign visitors to Iran. Hence, H3-1, H3-2, and H4 were met.

In this research, it was revealed that a positive, direct, and significant association exists between country image and revisit intentions. Doosti et al. ( 2016 ) supported that country image does not only impact significantly tourists’ visit intention, but also it impacts their decision-making process for a re-visit intention. Such an outcome aligned with the results of Beerli and Martin ( 2004 ) and Gallarza et al. ( 2002 ), who showed the same significant relationship. Similarly, the findings of Kim and Lee ( 2015 ) confirmed that city image is significant in predicting the revisit intentions of South Korean visitors to international cities. Finally, it was found that positive but insignificant relationship occurs between pull-push motives and revisit intentions. To demonstrate, it means that the push and pull factors do not have an impact on tourists’ revisit intentions. Therefore, H5 was confirmed, but H6 was rejected.

In this research, it investigated the influence of the push-pull motivational factors on internal tourists’ visit and revisit intentions to a domestic destination in Egypt. This study also tested the mediation effect of country image on the relationship between the independent variables (push and pull motives) and dependent variables (visit and revisit intentions). Based on that, the findings of this research showed that novelty and knowledge-seeking, ego-enhancement, cultural and historical attraction, environment and safety were found to understand and explain the visit intention of internal tourists to a domestic destination in Egypt very well and clearly, reporting a positive, direct, and significant relationship with the visit intention. However, the findings showed that rest and relaxation and tourism facilities did not contribute to the whole model, reporting a positive but insignificant relationship with the visit intention, and therefore contradicted with the results of the previous studies in the literature reviewed.

Over and above, this research presented that the country image is significantly and positively, as hypothesised and expected, mediates the relationship between push motives and visit intentions, and between the pull motives and visit intentions. Thus, showing its significance within the context of this research. Additionally, country image showed a significant and positive influence on both intentions investigated in this study, namely visit and revisit intentions. Therefore, this demonstrates that a more favourable country image can contribute to influencing tourists’ visit and revisit intentions to a domestic destination in Egypt.

Theoretical implications

This research has extended the knowledge and understanding base with two main contributions. Starting with, the novelty it added to these literatures: push-pull motivational factors, visit intention, and revisit intentions by providing more insights regarding internal tourist’s behaviour towards a domestic destination within the Arab region (Egypt). This is because a very limited literature has been devoted to explaining the model in Egypt, considering that Egypt is one of the promising countries when it comes to tourism and rich history. Secondly, this research has also contributed to the literature-base of the country image through providing deep valuable insights on the mediation role of country image in the relationship between the independent variables (push and pull motives) and the dependents (visit and revisit intentions).

Managerial/marketing implications

The findings of this study are considered valuable for marketers, tourism city managers, tourism-planning organisations, and government, as they are for researchers and academics, providing knowledge on how motivate and entice internal tourists to visit a domestic destination in Egypt. Marketers and tourism city managers can build strategies that can utilise the most push and pull factors that this study has investigated to embed them in their marketing campaigns. This can be achieved by utilising the novelty and knowledge seeking and ego-enhancement as the main push factors that can motivate and encourage internal tourists to visit a domestic destination in Egypt. This is in addition to utilising the factors that pull tourists from the destination itself, like cultural and historical attractions and environment and safety of the destination. Marketers can also enhance the country image and advertise for a more favourable and appealing image about Egypt, since it strengthens the associations between the independents and the dependent variables as it mediates. Finally, tourism-planning organisations and government need to cooperate and work together to promote the desirable destination based on pull factors like environment and safety of the destinations and attractions whether cultural or historical.

Limitations and directions for future research

There are limitations associated with this research. First, this research examined the motivational factors of the internal tourists in specific cities in Egypt (Cairo, Luxor, Alexandria, Aswan, Sharm El-Shiekh, Hurghada, Safaga and Ain El-Sokhna) since they are the most visited locations during vacations and were chosen based on TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel guidance platform and may not be generalised to the other cities. Thus, the generalisability of the study findings is limited to Egyptian citizens. Second, variables may not be considered as the only variables that reflect tourists’ intentions for visit or revisit, other variables can be included like trust. For future research, tourists’ evaluation in other tourism cities of Egypt may create a new insight about the relationships among motivations, city image, and visit and revisit intention. The present study was limited by the number variables used. It is recommended that future studies should include more variables. Moreover, other studies can deal with other variables related to visiting tourism cities including value, culture, and social motives.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article. The data that support part of the findings of this study are available and freely accessed from Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics available at https://www.capmas.gov.eg/Pages/IndicatorsPage.aspx?page_id=6133&ind_id=2251 and https://www.capmas.gov.eg/Pages/StaticPages.aspx?page_id=5034 , GALLUP available at https://www.gallup.com/analytics/267869/gallup-global-law-order-report-2019.aspx , International Monetary Fund available at https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2021/07/14/na070621-egypt-overcoming-the-covid-shock-and-maintaining-growth , Statista available at https://ezproxy.bue.edu.eg:2917/statistics/970638/egypt-tourist-arrivals/?locale=en , https://ezproxy.bue.edu.eg:2917/statistics/261740/countries-in-africa-ranked-by-international-tourist-arrivals/ , https://ezproxy.bue.edu.eg:2917/statistics/1343743/ttci-scores-of-countries-in-africa/ , The World Bank available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT.ARVL?end=2019&locations=EG&start=2007&view=chart , https://www.unwto.org/archive/middle-east/press-release/2016-02-24/unwto-confident-egypt-s-tourism-recovery , World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) available at https://www.unwto.org/glossary-tourism-terms , United Nations available at https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/Seriesm/SeriesM_83rev1e.pdf#page=21 , and World Economic Forum available at https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Travel_Tourism_Development_2021.pdf .

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Understanding tourist motivation is a crucial aspect of tourism advertising. It helps copywriters, and by extension translators, to communicate the key marketing message as effectively as possible. This chapter explores two fundamental questions that underpin the dynamics of tourism advertising: ‘what motivates people to become tourists?’ and ‘how does the industry persuade people to become tourists?’ By bringing insights from the fields of psychology and sociology, which have contributed significantly to the discussion of tourist motivations within Tourism Studies, we explore how tourists are naturally ‘pushed’ to act based on personal needs, how these needs are influenced by the surrounding environment and society and how tourists are ‘pulled’ by the attraction of particular destinations. The push-pull mechanism is leveraged by the tourism industry in its advertising campaigns. The chapter concludes by highlighting the role of culture in tourism advertising particularly in terms of motivation and style.

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Sulaiman, M.Z., Wilson, R. (2019). Understanding Tourist Motivation and Industry Persuasion. In: Translation and Tourism. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6343-6_1

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Demographic factors and travel motivation among leisure tourists in Tanzania

International Hospitality Review

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Article publication date: 3 April 2020

Issue publication date: 14 July 2020

To examine demographic factors and travel motivations among leisure tourists in Tanzania. Specifically by examining the influence of demographic factors on travel motivation among local and international leisure tourists in Tanzania.

Design/methodology/approach

Approach is quantitative and applied descriptive statistics, independent t -test and ANOVA.

The findings showed that age, gender and family size as demographic factors significantly influenced travel motivation among local and international leisure tourists.

Research limitations/implications

Future studies to consider different approaches including collection of data during the peak season, use qualitative method and conduct studies in other parts of the country to explore demographic factors and travel motivations of tourists.

Practical implications

To assist tourism stakeholders in their design of promotional tools to market tourism products/services to different tourists as opposed to homogeneous marketing campaigns.

Originality/value

Examined the influence of demographic factors and travel motivation among local and international leisure tourists in the context of Tanzania.

Demographic factors

Travel motivation.

• Leisure tourists

Kara, N.S. and Mkwizu, K.H. (2020), "Demographic factors and travel motivation among leisure tourists in Tanzania", International Hospitality Review , Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 81-103. https://doi.org/10.1108/IHR-01-2020-0002

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Copyright © 2020, Nasra Shoka Kara and Kezia Herman Mkwizu

Published in International Hospitality Review . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Travel motivation is commonly acknowledged as a crucial concept to most tourism professionals and theorists ( Lam and Hsu, 2006 ). Travel motivation has been known as a driving force behind understanding behavior ( Venkatesh, 2006 ). The concept of travel motivation is not new ( Pearce and Caltabiano, 1983 ). Researchers around the globe have applied travel motivation to determine individual's satisfaction level ( Snepenger et al. , 2006 ; Lemmetynen et al. , 2016 ; Celik and Dedeoglu, 2019 ; Preko et al. , 2019 ), predict leisure participation levels ( Yan and Halpenny, 2019 ), identify travel patterns ( Pearce, 1987 ; Cavagnaro and Staffieri, 2015 ), understand tourists’ travel decisions and consumption behavior ( Chang et al. , 2015 ) as well as to develop more effective strategies and policies to increase demand for tourism ( Heung et al. , 2001 ; Papatheodorou, 2006 ). The complex nature of this concept has pushed many researchers to come up with different travel motives. However, the central themes behind it revolved around push and pull factors/motives. Push and pull factors have been extensively employed to assess tourists' travel motivations ( Kanagaraj and Bindu, 2013 ; Michael et al. , 2017 ; Wijaya et al. , 2018 ).

In Tanzania, tourism plays a significant role in the country's economy and one among the crucial sectors in generating foreign exchange ( Tanzania Tourism Sector Survey, 2018 ). The sector indirectly offered 1,452,000 jobs in 2017 from 1,389,000 jobs offered in 2016 ( WTTC, 2017 ). Tourism in Tanzania generates about 17.5% of the total country's GDP and 25% of total foreign currency earnings ( Tanzania Tourism Sector Report, 2017 ). Tanzania is famously known for tourist attractions and home to the famous Roof of Africa, the Mount Kilimanjaro. Following these attractions, Tanzania has pulled thousands of international visitors from different parts of the world, thereby making the country be known as one of the competitive tourist destinations in sub-Saharan Africa ( Mkumbo, 2010 ). The WTTC (2017) projects a rising trend by 6.8% in 2027 of 2,267,000 international tourists to Tanzania.

On the other hand, the arrivals of domestic tourists to various tourist attractions in the country are not in the same pace as international travel market. Factors such as limited promotion, awareness, low income, inadequate information, media usage, marketing and service quality challenges such as infrastructure and trained staff have been reported to be among the factors affecting the performance of domestic tourism in Tanzania ( Wade et al. , 2001 ; Mariki et al. , 2011 ; Mkwizu, 2018a ; 2019 ; Mkwizu et al. , 2018 ). Some of the initiatives were done by the government to boost the travel market including setting preferential rates, establishment of the tourism training college for training purposes and introduction of intensive marketing campaigns to create awareness of tourism attractions. Despite all these efforts, there are more international tourists than locals visiting national parks. In 2018–2019, there were 731,351 international tourists compared to 464,933 locals that visited national parks ( Tanzania National Parks, 2019 ). The differences in tourist numbers can be attributed to the fact that Tanzania is the only country in the world that has allocated 25% of her land for wildlife and game-controlled reserves ( Tanzania Tourism Sector Survey, 2018 ). On the other hand, domestic tourists have been seen traveling mainly to visit their friends or relatives and sometimes they travel for leisure ( Mariki et al. , 2011 ). Therefore, there is need for more studies on whether the importance of travel motivations differs among the two groups.

Literature on consumer behavior acknowledges that travel motivation and needs are related ( Goodall, 1988 ), and this means that tourists may decide to take a vacation to satisfy their physiological needs such as food, health and learning. However, the decision of choosing a given destination to visit has been closely linked with sociodemographic characteristics. Woodside and Lysonski (1989) , Um and Crompton (1990) and Moscardo et al. (1996) are among the earliest studies that examined the role of demographic factors on tourists' destination choice with findings showing a link between demographic factors and visitors’ participation in tourism activities. For instance, increasing free time and disposable income have provided people with an opportunity to take part in outdoor activities ( Ibrahim and Cordes, 1993 ). Factors such as age and family structure have an impact on the decision of an individual to participate in leisure activities ( Foot, 2004 ) .

Demand for leisure is also affected by individuals' age and gender ( Mieczkowski, 1990 ; Collin and Tisdell, 2002 ). Collin and Tisdell (2002) found that demographic factors have a role to play in influencing visitors' participation in tourism activities as well as the selection of vacation destination. What is not known is the role that demographic factors such as age, gender and family size play in influencing tourists’ travel motivation in Tanzania. Studies that examined the influence of demographic factors on travel motivation in Tanzania are limited. Existing literature in Tanzania has mainly examined demographic factors in relation to nature-based tourism and media such as Mariki et al. (2011) and Mkwizu (2018a) . Therefore, this study intends to uncover the missing gap by examining demographic factors and travel motivation among local and international leisure tourists in Tanzania.

Furthermore, this study is important in providing insight information on various demographic factors such as age, gender and marital status in influencing tourists’ travel motivation particularly for Tanzania. The information from this study can help tourism stakeholders to segment tourists based on their demographic traits.

Literature review

Travel motivation is viewed as an internal force that arouses and pushes an individual from choosing a particular destination with the intention of getting the desired benefits and satisfaction ( Pyo et al. , 1989 ; Yoon and Uysal, 2005 ). Motivation is viewed as a sociopsychological factor that pushes an individual to a new destination and take part in leisure activities ( Iso-Ahola, 1982 ; Beard and Ragheb, 1983 ). This study defines travel motivation as an internal motive that drives a particular tourist to take a leisure trip in Tanzania.

The complex nature of travel motivation has caused many researchers to come up with different travel motives. However, a good number of them focused on push and pull factors. These dimensions have been used extensively in most of motivation studies ( Kim and Lehto, 2013 ). Due to the importance of these two factors, researchers such as Dann (1977) , Crompton (1979) , Iso-Ahola (1982) and Epperson (1983) developed different motivation dimensions based on the idea of push and pull travel motives.

Mazilu and Mitroi (2010) defined demographic factors as descriptive segmentation technique, whereby sociodemographic factors are directly involved. Examples of sociodemographic factors commonly used by tourism experts ( Ma et al. , 2018 ; Mkwizu, 2018a , 2018b ) include age, gender, family life cycle, education, income and nationality. These variables are believed to be accurate in describing tourism market and predicting travel behavior patterns ( Weaver and Oppermann, 2000 ).

Age is considered to be a crucial demographic factor by tourism stakeholders because leisure demand can effectively be predicted through visitors' age ( Mieczkowski, 1990 ). Age is reported to have positive influence on individual's desire for relaxation and nature exploration ( Ma et al. , 2018 ). According to Spence (2002) , the probability of an individual to participate in wildlife activities varies with age, meaning that the probability of activity participation increases when an individual is young and decreases as that individual grows old.

Gender is one of the major factors influencing travel demand ( Collin and Tisdell, 2002 ). The travel patterns between men and women vary based on their travel motivation. According to Collin and Tisdell (2002) , men travel more than women. Men travel for business-related activities while women do travel mainly for visiting friends and relatives and prefer taking shorter-distance trips compared to men ( Moriarty and Honnery, 2005 ). Females are reported to be highly involved in shopping and are more affected by intrapersonal or structural constraints than men ( Josiam et al. , 2005 ; Andronikidis et al. , 2008 ). Cost, time and family commitments are among limitations for women to be active in travel activities ( Scott, 2005 ; Alexandris and Carrol, 1997 ). As a result, women have been seen participating more in shopping, dining and cultural activities than outdoor activities such as skiing while men are more likely to participate in adventure activities ( Xie et al. , 2008 ).

Marital status is one of the factors that affect vacation decisions ( Kattiyapornpong and Miller, 2008 ). It is important for marketers to have such information because they can use such details to predict one's travel patterns. For instance, Lee and Bhargava (2004) found that married couples spend less time enjoying leisure than singles. This is due to the fact that married couples have social and family obligations that limit their time to undertake holiday vacation or participate in sports activities ( Henderson, 1990 ; Downward and Rasciute, 2010 ). Singles prefer shorter but frequent trips ( Biearnat and Lubowiecki-Vikuk, 2012 ). Singles are assumed to have more free time to engage in various activities compared to those with a family, for example, more time playing musical instruments, singing, dancing, watching TV and traveling for social activities ( Lee and Bhargava, 2004 ). The literature further highlights that Passias et al. (2017) found that never-married mothers have more time to spend on leisure than married mothers. In contrast, Vernon (2010) suggests that married women have more time to engage in leisure than single mothers. For the purpose of this study, age, gender and marital status were included in the analysis. The reason for these factors is due to the fact that there is limited information regarding the roles they play in influencing travel motivation of tourists in the context of Tanzania.

The Beard and Ragheb travel motivation theory

Beard and Ragheb (1983) developed the leisure motivation variables based on the idea from the work of Maslow (1970) . The leisure motivation theory contains four major travel motives, which determine satisfaction that a visitor may gain from taking part in leisure activities. The travel factors identified were: “Intellectual” – these include items such as learning and exploring; “social” – covers the desire for developing friendship and esteem of others; “competence-mastery” – involves issues such as health and fitness and lastly “stimulus avoidance” – which simply describes the desire to relax and escape the routine life. This study employs the Beard and Ragheb theory for the purpose of assessing tourist travel motivation. Beard and Ragheb's theory was chosen because since its establishment in 1983, many researchers ( Mohsin et al. , 2017 ; Albayrak and Caber, 2018 ; Jia et al. , 2018 ) have employed and validated it.

In 1983, Beard and Ragheb also noted that using leisure motivation scale (LMS) to study travel motivation is reliable due to the 32 items measuring Cronbach's alpha ranging from 0.89 to 0.91. Past scholars such as Yusof and Shah (2008) and Chen et al. (2018) have used LMS by Beard and Raghed (1983) to study motivation in tourism. For example, Chen et al. (2018) explored travel motivation for Chinese residents using LMS of 32 items to measure motivation due to its reliability and validity. Chen et al. (2018) found that there were significant differences of gender, marital status and education in leisure behaviors. This study not only used the Beard and Ragheb theory but also applied LMS by Beard and Ragheb (1983) due to its reliability and validity.

Demographic factors and travel motivation

Several researchers have examined travel motivation in relation to demographic factors. Some of these works include a work by Saayman and Saayman (2009) . Researchers examined the relationship between sociodemographic, behavioral and motivational factors for tourists that visited Addo Elephant National Park. The findings of this study revealed that tourists were motivated to travel to the national park because of the need for nature, activities, escape, attractions, photography, family and socialization. It was further pointed out that both sociodemographic and motivational factors influence visitors’ spending decisions.

Differences in travel motivation are noted in past studies such as You et al. (2000) , Kozak (2002) , Jönsson and Deonish (2008) , Kim and Prideaux (2005) , Fan et al. (2015) , Gu et al. (2015) , Albayrak and Caber (2018) and Marques et al. (2018) . The findings of these studies concluded that travel motives differ among travelers from different countries ( You et al. , 2000 ; Kim and Prideaux, 2005 ), among students from different countries ( Marques et al. , 2018 ), across various destinations and nationalities ( Kozak, 2002 ), among tourists participated in white water rafting activity ( Albayrak and Caber, 2018 ), across different forms of tourism ( Gu et al. , 2015 ) as well as those from different countries visiting the same destination ( Jönsson and Deonish, 2008 ).

Yung-Kun et al. (2015) explored factors related to tourists' motivation to visit Taiwan as well as the demographic segmentation of these foreign tourists. The results indicated that push motivation factors such as enlightenment, freedom, shopping, diverse attractions, culture connections, sport facilities and wildlife play a crucial role in the motivation of foreign tourists. These tourists were later clustered into five main motivation groups to include scenery/knowledge seekers, accessibility/expenditure seekers, relaxation/relation seekers, novelty/experience seekers, sport/service seekers based on five demographic traits (gender, age, marital status, nationality and income).

Additionally, Fan et al. (2015) compared motivation and intention of cruise passengers from different demographic profiles in China. They found that travelers from different demographic caliber differ in terms of their travel motivation. For example, singles had higher mean values for travel motivations such as discovering and exploring nature than those who were married. Researchers believed that singles have ample time and freedom to try new and exciting things compared to married travelers. Furthermore, Ma et al. (2018) examined the relationship among tourists' sociodemographic characteristics, motivation and satisfaction as a way of predicting their visitation patterns and travel behaviors to forest nature reserves in Guangdong. The findings from multiple regression analysis revealed that some of the sociodemographic factors had a role to play in influencing travel motivation. For example, age was positively correlated with travel motivation called sense of relaxation and nature exploration. However, education level negatively influenced social travel motivation.

Older people or senior travelers are motivated by the desire for novelty ( Jönsson and Deonish, 2008 ). However, a study by Luo and Deng (2008) found age negatively influenced travel motivation and that younger tourists prefer seeking for novelty compared to older travelers. A study by Mohsin (2008) was done to examine the impact of sociodemographic variables on Mainland Chinese holidaymakers who traveled to New Zealand. The overall findings of one-way ANOVA revealed that there is a significant relationship between travel motivation and demographic factors such age and educational level. The findings are supported by previous studies of Park and Mok (1998) that travel motivation varies with age. Irimias et al. (2016) conducted a study aimed at exploring demographic characteristics in influencing religious tourism behavior among 345 Hungarians who traveled for pilgrimage. It was found that their travel motives differ with age; senior travelers see educational purposes and feelings of national identity related to sacred sites as crucial travel motives while young tourists did not picture that to be of any value to their travel motives. Njagi et al. (2017) conducted a study to provide an in-depth understanding of the factors affecting travel motivation of youth travelers in Kenya. The study revealed that push factors are more crucial in influencing youth travelers in Kenya than the pull travel motives.

The overall findings from the previous studies confirmed that sociodemographic factors have a role to play in influencing tourists’ travel motivation. However, these studies focused more on push and pull factors among youth travelers in Kenya ( Njagi et al. , 2017 ) and among travelers who traveled to Taiwan ( Yung-Kun et al. , 2015 ). Furthermore, the existing studies also looked at the relationships between sociodemographic factors and travel motivation among cruise passengers who traveled to China ( Fan et al. , 2015 ), those who traveled to national parks ( Saayman and Saayman 2009 ) and those who traveled to sacred places for religious purposes ( Irimias et al. , 2016 ). From the reviewed literature, it is evident that sociodemographic factors are crucial in predicting travel patterns of tourists.

However, there are still inconclusive remarks regarding the influence of sociodemographic factors on travel motivation. For example, age was reported to be among the key factors affecting travel motivation ( Irimias et al. , 2016 ; Ma et al. , 2018 ). On the other hand, age was reported to have a negative effect on travel motivation ( Luo and Deng, 2008 ). Other demographic factors such as education were also reported to have a negative effect on travel motivation ( Ma et al. , 2018 ) while marital status was seen to be a significant factor in influencing travel motivation among cruise passengers ( Fan et al. , 2015 ). Furthermore, the existing studies such as Baniya and Paudel (2016) have examined the effects of demographic factors on travel motivation using push and pull items. Other studies in Tanzania ( Wade et al. , 2001 ; Mariki et al. , 2011 ; Mkwizu, 2018a ; 2018b ; 2019 ; Mkwizu et al. , 2018 ) have focused on nature-based tourism, history, market analysis and media. Therefore, this study specifically intended to examine the extent to which demographic factors such as age, gender and marital status influenced travel motivation among local and international leisure tourists guided by the motivation theory and scale items developed by Beard and Ragheb (1983) .

Methodology

Research instrument.

The research questionnaire was divided into two major parts. The first part covered general information about the respondents. Demographic information such as age, gender, marital status and family size. This section composed of six questions. The second part comprised information related to tourists' travel motivation. Respondents were asked to rank the list of travel motivation statements according to their level of importance, indicating whether those statements describe their travel motivation on a Likert scale of 1 ( Not important at all ) to 7 ( Extremely important ). Examples of travel motivation items were to learn things around me, to challenge my abilities and to relax mentally. This study employed Likert scale developed by Kozak (2002) , who highlighted that Likert scale is appropriate to be used in tourist-based studies. This study adopted the shortest version of LMS, which consists of 32 items to measure different travel motives because of its Cronbach's alpha reliability ranging from 0.89 to 0.91 as pointed out by Beard and Ragheb (1983) . The shortest version is appropriate to be used in a research constrained by time and can be applied within less time compared to 48 items from the original scale ( Beard and Ragheb, 1983 ).

Sampling design

A convenience sampling technique was adopted to get the appropriate sample for the study. Ferber (1977) noted that convenience sampling as one form of nonprobability sampling can reduce the impact of nonrandom convenience sampling by making sure that the generated findings are a true representative of the population. Additionally, convenience sampling is one among the appropriate sampling technique s to be used when collecting data from the actual tourist settings ( Madrigal and Kahle, 1994 ).

Data collection

This study used a quantitative approach and survey strategy as the research design. Before collection of data, the survey instrument was pretested by distributing the questionnaires to 50 international tourists found on the beaches of Zanzibar and Pemba islands. Respondents were randomly and conveniently selected to take part in the study. The pretesting exercise was done to assess the survey suitability, readability, eliminate any vague items and determine the response rate. Data was collected from January 2017 to May 2017. A self-administered open-ended questionnaire was employed to 300 local and international tourists who traveled to and within Tanzania for leisure. Tourists at the Julius Nyerere International Airport lounges and those on the beaches of the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba were conveniently approached and asked to take part in the study. The decision to take part in the study was left entirely to tourists. Those who agreed to participate in the study were given a survey questionnaire to fill in.

Data analysis

The collected data was analyzed using the aid of a Social Science Statistical Package (SPSS) version 20. This study selected SPSS, which has descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages in order to avail demographic characteristics of the respondents. In addition, the independent sample t -test was used to test the differences in travel motivation among local and international tourists. ANOVA assisted this study to test the effect of the independent variable (demographic factors) on the dependent variable (travel motivation). Data was cleaned first to check whether there was missing data, outliers and determine the data distribution pattern before analysis. Cronbach's alpha coefficients were employed for purposes of examining internal data consistency. Content, construct, convergent and discriminant validities were tested using CFA.

Respondents' demographic characteristics

Out of 300 surveys from each group, only 250 from each group were recognized as a useable survey, representing a token useable return rate of 83%. The overall descriptive statistics from Table 1 shows that most tourists from each group were between the ages of 18 and 30 (45.6% for internationals and 49.2% for locals), and less than 10% were covered by the senior tourists (4.4% for internationals and 6% for locals). The gender distribution showed that majority of international tourists were males (61.2%) and also for local tourists most were males (61.8%). Over 50% of all tourists had a university education and employed in different fields. On marital status, 53.2% of all the international tourists were married while 49% of all locals were married.

The findings in Table 1 further indicate that 47% of internationals and 51.2% of all locals were singles. On family size distribution, the majority of international tourists have three children and above while 40% of all locals proved to have less than three children. This suggests that the sampled respondents were mostly young educated male tourists who are employed. In addition, the differences between the international and local tourists are noted in marital status.

Furthermore, Table 2 indicates that the largest group of international tourists was from South Africa (10%) followed by Australia (8.8%) and Kenya (8%). There were very few international tourists from countries such as Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon and Zurich. These results suggest that the young educated male international tourists were mostly from South Africa.

Reliability results

The alpha coefficient for the total scale was 0.933 and the alpha values for each of the subscales ranged from 0.880 to 0.907, which are above the acceptable threshold (0.70) as suggested by Hair et al. (1998) . The summary of the results is presented in Table 3 .

Validity results

All 32 travel motivation items were subjected to CFA for validity testing as it is presented in Table 4 . Content validity for the observed items was tested for consistency, easy of understanding and appropriateness by members of the academic staff together with tourist experts. Construct validity was examined using composite reliability (CR) and average variance explained (AVE). The overall findings indicate that CR and AVE surpassed the threshold values of 0.70 and 0.50, respectively ( Yap and Khong, 2006 ). Therefore, it can be concluded that the indicators for all constructs met the reliability thresholds and thus qualified for further analyses. Convergent validity indicated that the standardized factor loadings for all the items were above the acceptable range of 0.5 as indicated by Tabachnick and Fidell (2007) . In this study, all the CR and AVE were above the recommended value of 0.7 and 0.5 respectively. Discriminant validity was assessed using Fornell and Larcker’s approach of 1981. In order to achieve discriminant validity, AVE of each construct was compared with the shared variance between two constructs. For all the items, the AVE was higher than the shared variance (MSV). The results indicated that all the constructs had acceptable discriminant validity as presented in Table 4 .

Assumptions guiding independent t -test

Data normality.

Before testing for the differences in travel motivation among the tourists, data normality was performed using descriptive statistics. Skewness and kurtosis values were used to determine data normality. Meyers et al. (2006) highlighted that if the values of skewness and kurtosis range within ± 1.00, these are evidence of data normality. Pallant (2011) advised that when one is dealing with large enough sample sizes (e.g. 30+), the violation of normality assumption may not cause any significant problems. For this study, the skewness and kurtosis values were within the cutoff points as was highlighted by Meyers et al. (2006) and Pallant (2011) .

Differences in the importance of travel motivation among international and local leisure tourists

An independent sample t -test was conducted to test whether the importance of travel motivation differs among international and local tourists. This meant comparing travel motivation mean scores for international and local tourists. First of all Levene's test was performed to see whether there was equal variance in the data set. The overall results show that this assumption was met in eight travel motivation items ( p  ≥ 0.005) while for the rest of the travel motivation items, the assumption was violated as it is presented in Table 5 , Table 6 , Table 7 and Table 8 . The results in Table 5 , Table 6 , Table 7 and Table 8 indicate that there was significant difference in scores for travel motivation among international and local leisure tourists. In Table 5 , the findings show that local tourists had higher mean values than international tourists for travel motivation (intellectual motivation) such as to learn about myself ( M  = 5.67, SD = 1.288), to explore new ideas ( M  = 5.73, SD = 1.294), to expand my knowledge ( M  = 6.05, SD = 1.136), to be creative ( M  = 5.68, SD = 1.494), to use my imagination ( M  = 5.22, SD = 1.757) and to satisfy my curiosity ( M  = 5.81, SD = 1.265).

In Table 6 , the findings show that local tourists had higher mean values compared to international tourists for travel motivation (social motivation) such as to build friendship with others ( M  = 5.70, SD = 1.353), to interact with others ( M  = 5.66, SD = 1.428), to develop close friendships ( M  = 5.47, SD = 1.573), to reveal my thoughts ( M  = 5.11, SD = 1.657), to be socially competent and skillful ( M  = 5.66, SD = 1.425), to gain a feeling of belonging ( M  = 5.62, SD = 1.387) and to gain others' respect ( M  = 5.24, SD = 1.827).

Table 7 indicates that local tourists had higher mean values than international tourists for travel motivation (mastery competency motivation) such as to be active ( M  = 5.76, SD = 1.296), to develop physical skills and abilities ( M  = 5.59, SD = 1.375), to keep in shape physically ( M  = 5.39, SD = 1.702), to use my physical abilities ( M  = 5.28) and to develop physical fitness ( M  = 5.21, SD = 1.685). The remaining mastery competency motives had no significant differences.

Table 8 reveals that local tourists had higher mean values for travel motivation (stimulus avoidance motivation) such as to calm down ( M  = 4.89, SD = 1.674), to be alone ( M  = 3.32, SD = 2.064), to relax physically ( M  = 5.39, SD = 1.499), to relax mentally ( M  = 5.63, SD = 1.426), to rest ( M  = 5.53, SD = 1.508), to relieve stress and tension ( M  = 5.48, SD = 1.506) as well as to unstructure my time ( M  = 5.48, SD = 1.506) compared to international tourists. The remaining stimulus avoidance motives had no significant differences.

Differences in travel motivation among tourists by age, gender and family size

Univariate ANOVA tests the interaction between each dependent variable with an independent variable; in short, ANOVA explains changes in the dependent variable, which are caused by the interaction between the independent variables. First, multivariate tests were performed to assess whether there is a significant effect between independent and dependent variables. Second, univariate ANOVA was applied to examine the effect of independent variables on specific dependent variable. Previous scholars have also used ANOVA in examining demographic factors with motivation such as Urosevic et al. (2016) . Using Pillai's trace results in Table 9 indicated that there was significant effect between travel motivation across age F (96.000) = 1.396, p  = 0.008, across gender F (32.000) = 2.005, p  = 0.001, across family size F (32.000) = 2.610, p  = 0.000, across the interaction between age and family F (96.000) = 1.154, p  = 0.023 as well as the interaction between age, gender and family size F (96.000) = 1.514, p  = 0.001.

A separate ANOVA shown in Table 10 was performed to each travel motivation at alpha level of 0.005, and it was found that there were significant difference s among age groups on the need to develop physical skills and abilities F (312.594) = 4.972, p  = 0.002 while for males and females results show the desire to explore new ideas among age groups F (18.906) = 4.451, p  = 0.035 and the desire to discover new things F (16.081) = 3.899, p  = 0.049.

Furthermore, the results indicated that desire to develop physical skills and abilities was significantly different among tourists who have small and large family size F (156.811) = 22.428, p  = 0.000. Other differences were reflected on travel motivation such as the desire to develop physical fitness F (167.625) = 18.772, p  = 0.000 as well as to unstructure my time F (150.424) = 14.955, p  = 0.000.

This study also examined the contribution of the interaction effects of the independent variables on the dependent variable. Table 10 shows that the interaction between age and family size was significant to travel motivation such as to relieve stress and tension F (319.051) = 6.112, p  = 0.000, to develop physical fitness F (320.517) = 5.695, p  = 0.001, ŋ 2  = 0.034, to unstructure my time F (318.159) = 5.386, p  = 0.001, as well as to use my physical abilities F (311.260) = 3.322, p  = 0.020. Additionally, the interaction effect between age, gender and family size was significant to travel motivation such as to satisfy my curiosity F (35.223) = 2.693, p  = 0.046, as well as to develop close friendships with others F (38.729) = 2.634, p  = 0.049.

Discussions of findings

This study reveals that leisure tourists from Australia, Kenya, South Africa, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and United States were motivated to travel to the country with the intention of discovering and learning new things. Furthermore, similar groups of tourists were extremely motivated to visit Tanzania for the sake of relaxing mentally, revealing stress and tensions of their daily routine activities. The results imply that leisure tourists may have more than a single travel motive when visiting a particular destination. These findings support the idea developed by Crompton (1979) that tourists' motivations are multiple and because of that they may have different reasons of taking either domestic or international trips ( Mayo and Jarvis, 1981 ). Researchers also add that some people take trips not only to fulfill their physiological desires (food, climate and health) but also to satisfy their psychological needs.

Furthermore, the study also found that tourists from the United Kingdom and United States had strong views that they were motivated to visit the country for social reasons such as building friendship with others. This can be explained by differences in tourists' culture. It has been identified that there are motivational differences between nationalities ( Kozak, 2002 ). Culture associated with nationality has been extensively acknowledged to be one among the crucial factors differentiating individuals’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviors ( Chen, 2000 ). National culture can be employed to reveal variations in the social behavior of different nationalities, especially in international settings such as tourism experiences ( Kim et al. , 2002 ). The findings of this study confirmed the results reported by Özdemir and Yolal (2016) that Americans and British people prefer to interact and socialize with other tourists when they travel. Additionally, Kozak (2002) pointed out that British tourists enjoy mixing themselves and having fun with other tourists when they travel. It seems that Tanzania is attracting tourists who have psychocentric personality. Individuals of this nature prefer visiting familiar places, having fun and relaxing when visiting new destinations ( Plog, 1974 ).

Surprisingly, this study found that tourists, mainly from Kenya and South Africa, were motivated strongly to travel to the country for the intention of competing and being good at participating in leisure activities. This can be explained by the differences in the level of novelty seeking among tourists. Novelty seeking is one among the key reasons why tourists travel to new destinations ( Dayour and Adongo, 2015 ). The findings of this study show that there is a possibility that tourists from Kenya and South Africa are sensation seekers. Individuals of this nature are risk takers, and this is why they prefer to travel to unfamiliar destinations ( Pizam et al. , 2004 ). Generally, tourists are attracted differently to different tourist attractions, and this is because they have different levels of tolerance for tourism experiences. Some people choose destinations where they can unwind their daily routine life while others look for destinations that can offer adventure life. The choice of a destination can sometimes be linked to tourists' personality traits. The findings of this study imply that Kenyans and South Africans may be allocentrics. Individuals of this caliber are usually seeking for arousal from unexpected and surprising stimuli ( Ryan, 1997 ), they are outgoing, confident, relatively anxiety free, like to feel in control, prefer to visit new destinations, desire to explore the world around them and are moderately risk takers ( Plog, 1973 , 1974 ).

This study found that there was no significant differences in travel motivation among leisure tourists who are single and those who are married. However, a minor difference was revealed on intellectual travel motives to single leisure tourists. It was revealed that single leisure tourists were highly motivated to travel to Tanzania for intellectual purpose. This finding is consistent with a study by Fan et al. (2015) that single people place higher value when it comes to discovering and learning new things compared to married ones. The finding of this study is not surprising since Tanzania is blessed with multiple tourist attractions ranging from game reserves, controlled conservation areas and national parks ( URT, 2014 ). Other attractions include Mount Kilimanjaro, museums, historical sites and buildings. Following these attractions, it is not surprising to see single leisure tourists travel to the country for intellectual reasons.

The findings further indicated that married leisure tourists were more motivated to travel to the country, mainly by their desire to unwind their daily life's hustle. This could be due to the fact that married couples spend less time enjoying leisure than singles. In addition, married couples have social and family obligations that limit their time to undertake holidays ( Henderson, 1990 ) or participate in learning activities as singles. For them, escaping travel motive makes sense since they have been experiencing routine hectic daily life; therefore, it is understandable to see them ranking this motive important. This finding somehow corroborates the views of Leonard and Onyx (2009) that relaxation and escape motivations are two key psychological motives that drive people to take overseas trips. The desire to take a vacation is closely associated with the desire to escape ( Jarvis and Peel, 2010 ). Therefore, tourists often choose to take a vacation to a new destination with the intention of breaking from the daily routine life of home and work ( Kim and Ritchie, 2012 ). The break gives people an opportunity to refresh their minds by taking active role in nonroutine leisure activities ( Ritchie et al. , 2010 ) as well as offering a platform for them to liberate themselves from tension and anxiety.

Furthermore, the study revealed that married leisure tourists traveled to the country for social reasons. This finding is somehow consistent with the study by Passias et al. (2017) that married mothers prefer to spend quality time with their children by engaging themselves in both active and social leisure compared to single mothers. Generally, tourism offers opportunity to bring people of different cultural backgrounds together ( Brown and Lehto, 2005 ), but also offers avenue for them to meet and communicate with others ( Dayour, 2013 ). This study also found that married leisure tourists had higher mean scores for mastery competency travel motives compared to singles. This finding implies that may be Tanzania attracts married leisure tourists who are sensational seekers because tourists differ in the way they consume and obtain novel experience ( Lee and Crompton, 1992 ). Tourists who are high sensational seekers prefer to engage in adventure activities such as scuba diving ( Heyman and Rose, 1980 ) as well as mountain climbing ( Robinson, 1985 ). This group also prefers to travel to new places or meeting new people ( Zuckerman, 1979 ). This finding can be supported by the fact that Tanzania is endowed with more than eight known mountains that attract international tourists from all over the world. Moreover, the country is surrounded with both sandy and clean beaches that offer opportunity for tourists to take part in scuba diving and other water sports activities.

Therefore, the discussion of results for this study has theoretical, practical and policy implications, which are further highlighted in the implications section of this paper.

Conclusions

Based on the findings and discussions, this study can conclude that in examining demographic factors and travel motivation among leisure tourists, there are influential factors. The demographic factors that influence travel motivation (intellectual, social, mastery competency and stimulus avoidance) among local and international leisure tourists in the context of Tanzania are age, gender and family size.

Implications

Theoretical implication.

The overall findings from this study imply that theoretically, the Beard and Ragheb leisure motivation theory and scale can be used to determine tourists’ travel motives in Tanzania. Age, gender and family size significantly influenced intellectual, social, mastery competency and stimulus avoidance motives among local and international leisure tourists.

Practical implication

From a practical implication, the differences in travel motivation among tourists are not homogeneous; therefore, they are not supposed to be treated equally. What is important to tourists from South Africa may not be important to tourists from other countries. Therefore, the government of Tanzania through the Ministry of Tourism and Natural Resources (MNRT) and Tanzania Tourists Board (TTB) should make sure that they promote Tanzania as a destination for people to discover new things, hence attract tourists from South Africa, Kenya, Australia, Germany as well as tourists from France. Furthermore, Tanzania can also be segmented as a friendly and social destination as this will attract tourists from the United States and the United Kingdom. Additionally, destination managers need to make use of the existing attractions such as mountains, beaches, national parks and game reserves to position the country as an adventurous destination. This can help to attract more tourists from Kenya and South Africa.

Policy implication

From a policy perspective, the government, destination marketers, policymakers and tourism stakeholders should make use of the tourists' marital status data because such data can develop better promotion campaigns that match their travel motives. For example, single tourists had higher mean value for intellectual travel motives. This implies that tourist attractions such as museums, historical sites, rock paintings, old town and old buildings can be used to segment this target group. Since singles travel more and spend more time enjoying leisure than married couples, then it would be better for destination managers as well as policymakers to use this opportunity to position the country as a destination that helps tourists to discover new things. On the other hand, married tourists were reported to have higher mean values for most of mastery competency and social and stimulus avoidance travel motives. This implies that the destination managers should advertise tourist activities such as boat cruising, shopping, swimming, as well as beach sports activities for this group. These activities will help them to meet other people, to relax near the sandy beaches as well as to take part in various adventurous games.

Limitations and suggestions for further studies

This study examined travel motivation differences among leisure tourists who were married and those who were single. It did not cover widowers and those who were divorced. Focus was on international tourists who traveled to Northern tourist circuit and islands of Zanzibar and Pemba for leisure. Therefore, the results from the study may not be generalized beyond the selected population. This geographically limited survey may produce different results and conclusions in terms of the magnitude and the strength of relationships among variables. Tourists who visited other circuits (Southern tourist circuit) may have different opinion preferences regarding the importance of travel motives. Replication of similar studies in other tourist circuits should be done to see whether similar findings could be generated.

Additionally, this study employed nonprobability sampling. Therefore, this may affect the external validity. Other studies should try to adopt probability sampling design so as to avoid this problem. Furthermore, the data collection was done between January and May, which is the low season. Thus, the findings of this study are limited to this particular period. Therefore, the tourists who travel in different seasons, for instance, high peak season, might have different opinions regarding the importance of their travel motives. In tourism, seasonality limits the generalization of the study findings and should always be taken into consideration in the interpretation stage. Future research should conduct similar studies in different seasons to overcome this limitation. The obtained results can then be compared to identify similarities and differences between them. Also, the generated findings can be used to validate the findings of this study.

Tourists’ demographic characteristics (age, gender, education, occupation, marital status and family size )

Independent t -test results for intellectual motivation (IL) among tourists

Tests between subjects effects for age, gender and family size on travel motivation

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Travel motives

Understanding tourists travel motives is crucial in several respects. Partly for tourism business owners who need to understand which needs their experiences should fulfil for tourists, but also for the various authorities planning for tourism development. It can also explain tourists’ (unsustainable or sustainable) behaviour on holiday and make it possible to counteract or encourage that behaviour.  

It’s important to clarify the definition of travel motive, especially in relation to the purpose of the journey. Motive isn’t the same thing as purpose. Motives are the underlying psychological reasons why we travel, and are often not openly taken into account, unlike the purpose of the trip. They reflect the needs of the individual and can often be hard to put into words.

One example: The purpose of my last trip to Stockholm was to meet friends and acquaintances as well as go to a music event. Those were my desired experiences and the purpose of the trip. Motive explains why we want to travel for that purpose and can in this case, for instance, be escapism (i.e. getting away from it all), relationships (strengthening and nurturing relationships with nearest and dearest) or nostalgia (seeing the band I’ve loved since I was a teenager). That it was Stockholm in particular that I travelled to was because I have friends there and the band was playing there that weekend. But it could just as easily have been another destination. In this context it’s also common to talk about push or pull factors , in other words factors that push you away from your home area and factors that pull you to various destinations. The former often includes motive, like the desire to escape day to day life (escapism) or to try and find something different (novelty seeking), whereas pull factors are specific attractions in destinations (read more about that later under Destinations’ Offers ).

Research on travel motive has discovered a number of different motivating factors and patterns, that often change depending on context and destination. Two theories have been important for the understanding of travel motive; Travel Career Ladder and Travel Career Pattern , which are partly based on Maslow’s well known Hierarchy of Needs. The latter progresses the former, and focuses on motivation patterns , in other words the many different motives that cluster together to form a tourist’s motivation to travel to a particular place. The Travel Career theory is important here, as well as motivation pattern. Someone who has visited every corner of the earth and travelled continuously for long periods has other motives than a first time traveller. The motives overlap each other but research has shown that in general there is a significant difference that is derived from a tourist’s prior experience of travelling.

Research shows that tourists with high travel experience want to distance themselves from other “tourists” (read: charter tourists) and see themselves as “travellers” and “explorers”. Consumption of (different kinds of) journeys consequently becomes an important strategy, which is used to differentiate themselves socially and culturally from others. In the table below we can see examples of which motives arise in connection to how experienced a tourist is.

Table 1: Motivational factors, travel career patterns (adapted from Pearce & Lee, 2005)

The table shows that there are four main motives which arise whatever the travel experience; Novelty Seeking , Escapism/Relaxation , Relationships and Self Development . The last two motives pull in different directions depending on the travel experience; internal or external ( personal developmen t versus host site involvement and security versus strengthen relationships ). The table also shows motives that are generally specific to those with lower travel experience.

Research on travel motives is often carried out on Western tourists. There’s a certain degree of variation in how strong the different travel motives are, but studies of Asian tourists, for instance, show bigger differences. For example prestige or self-actualization , and strengthening family relationships have been shown to be of greater importance in studies of Japanese tourists, and novelty seeking is less important in comparison. Other cultural contexts are said to be the largest reason for these differences.

Sources: Crompton, J. L., & McKay, S. L. (1997). Motives of visitors attending festival events. Annals of Tourism Research, 24(2), 425-439. Iso-Ahola, S. E. (1982). Toward a social psychological theory of tourism motivation: A rejoinder. Annals of Tourism Research, 9(2), 256-262.  Kim, S. S., & Prideaux, B. (2005). Marketing implications arising from a comparative study of international pleasure tourist motivations and other travel-related characteristics of visitors to Korea. Tourism Management, 26(3), 347-357. Munt, I. (1994). The ‘Other' postmodern tourism: Culture, Travel and the New Middle Classes. Theory, Culture & Society, 11(3), 101-123. Pearce, P. L., & Lee, U.-I. (2005). Developing the travel career approach to tourist motivation. Journal of Travel Research, 43(3), 226-237.