MEASURING TOURIST MOTIVATION

The development of a self-report scale to measure leisure travel motivation is described. Under increasingly competitive conditions, effective tourism marketing is impossible without an understanding of consumers' motivations. Unfortunately, motivation is one of the least researched areas of tourism, both conceptually and empirically. A series of three studies describes the development and evaluation of a 20-item, self-report scale that relates leisure travel to specific, generalizable motivators that resemble the taxonomies of functional theorists. Results are discussed in terms of the potential that a functional approach holds for understanding, predicting, and influencing the relationship between tourist motivation and behavior.