MEASURING NOVELTY SEEKING IN TOURISM

The purposes of the study were to define the construct of novelty in the context of tourism, to conceptualize its role in the destination choice process, and to develop an instrument to measure novelty. The novelty construct was comprised of four interrelated but distinctive dimensions: thrill, change from routine, boredom alleviation, and surprise. A 21 item instrument was developed to measure the construct and its dimensions. The scale was judged to have content validity by an initial panel of experts. It was demonstrated to have convergent, theoretical, discriminant, and criterion validity in terms of its expected correlations with other measures. Items measuring the dimensions were internally consistent, and both test-retest and split-half reliability were satisfactory.