Abstract (150 Words)
Involvement, a widespread concept in marketing, leisure and recreation, has played a more limited role in tourism studies. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the influence of visitors’ personal and trip characteristics on the involvement dimensions in a tourism context, thereby offering a segmentation perspective of visitors’ involvement levels. The Involvement Profile scale was administered to 1000 international visitors in Mauritius at various beach resorts. The importance and pleasure dimensions merged to form the attraction dimension while risk probability items loaded as per the original scale. The results confirm the existence of different visitor groups based on involvement, but it is not yet conclusive whether the IP scale is applicable to visitors in a tourist destination context. Given the various results generated from the application of involvement scales in tourism contexts, there is a need to revisit the construct for visitors to tourist destinations using qualitative methodologies.
International Visitors’ Personal Involvement Levels A Factor-Cluster Segmentation Analysis
Involvement, a widespread concept in marketing, leisure and recreation, has played a more limited role in tourism studies. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the influence of visitors’ personal and trip characteristics on the involvement dimensions in a tourism context, thereby offering a segmentation perspective of visitors’ involvement levels. The Involvement Profile scale was administered to 1000 international visitors in Mauritius at various beach resorts. The importance and pleasure dimensions merged to form the attraction dimension while risk probability items loaded as per the original scale. The results confirm the existence of different visitor groups based on involvement, but it is not yet conclusive whether the IP scale is applicable to visitors in a tourist destination context. Given the various results generated from the application of involvement scales in tourism contexts, there is a need to revisit the construct for visitors to tourist destinations using qualitative methodologies.
