Motivation for Pleasure Travel - Tourism: Principles, Practices, Philosophies - page 204

TABLE 9.3 Requirements of a Sound Theory of Tourist Motivation

Element Explanation

1. The role of the theory Must be able to integrate existing tourist needs, reorganize the needs, and provide a new

orientation for future research.

2. The ownership and appeal of
the theory

Must be appealing to specialist researchers, useful in tourism industry settings, and credible to
marketers and consumers.

3. Ease of communication Must be relatively easy to explain to potential users and be universal (not country-speci c) in

its application.

4. Ability to measure travel
motivation

Must be amenable to empirical study. The ideas can be translated into questions and
responses for assessment purposes.

5. A multimotive versus single-
trait approach

Must consider the view that travelers may seek to satisfy several needs at once. Must be able
to model the pattern of traveler needs, not just consider one need.

6. A dynamic versus snapshot
approach

Must recognize that both individuals and societies change over time. Must be able to consider
or model the changes that take place continuously in tourism.

7. The roles of extrinsic and
intrinsic

Must be able to consider that travelers are variously motivated by intrinsic, self-satisfying
goals and at other times are motivated by extrinsic, socially controlled rewards (e.g.,
others

' opinions).

One starting point in the conceptual approaches to motivation is the work of Stanley Plog. 13 This
work, often uncritically accepted as the major approach to tourist motivation, stressed that travelers
could be categorized on a psychocentric (nonadventurous, inward-looking) to allocentric (adventur-
ous, outward-looking) scale. Plog claimed the U.S. population was normally distributed along a
continuum between these two extreme types. The approach was historically important in providing
one organizing theory of travel motivation. It does not, however, ful ll many of the criteria listed in
Table 9.3 and was notably de cient, at least initially, in terms of offering only a single-trait, static, and
extrinsic account of tourist motivation. In the 1991 version of the approach, a second dimension,
energy versus lethargy, was added to the psychocentric-allocentric dimension, thus developing a four-
part categorization scheme. Nevertheless, the approach is still limited because of its North American
bias, and it does not consider the issues of multimotive behavior, nor does it provide measurement
details or consider the dynamic nature of motives in the travelers life span.

Some new emerging theories of tourist and leisure motivation ful ll more of the criteria described
in Table 9.3. In particular, the intrinsic-motivation

'

optimal-arousal perspective of Iso-Ahola 14 and the
travel needs model of Pearce both added new perspectives to the tourist-motivation eld. 15
Iso-Ahola argues that tourist and leisure behavior takes place within a framework of optimal
arousal and incongruity. That is, while individuals seek different levels of stimulation, they share the
need to avoid either overstimulation (mental and physical exhaustion) or boredom (too little
stimulation). Leisure needs change during the life span and across places and social company. He
advises researchers to keep the motivation questions for leisure close to the actual participation in
time and emphasizes the importance of participants

—

' feelings of self-determination and competence

to ensure satisfaction.
The

articulated by Pearce and coworkers is more explicitly concerned with
tourists and their motives rather than with leisure, which is the focus of Iso-Ahola's work. The travel-
needs model argues that people have a career in their travel behavior that re ects a hierarchy of their
travel motives. A travel career is similar to a work career: People may start at different levels, they are
likely to change their levels during their life cycle, and they can be inhibited in their travel career by
money, health, and other people.
The steps or levels on the travel-needs or career model were likened to a ladder, and this concept was
built on AbrahamMaslow

travel-needs model

s hierarchy of needs. 16 By expanding and extending the range of speci cneeds
at each ladder level that twithMaslow

'

' s original formulation, Pearce achieved a comprehensive and