What Moves Us? An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Reasons for Traveling

Abstract

We review a number of theories of motivation, and typologies of motivations, in psychological theory and in application to a variety of specific contexts, including shopping, eating, leisure, tourism, and travel. A recurring theme is the distinction between extrinsic (instrumental, utilitarian, functional) and intrinsic (autotelic, hedonic, experiential) motivations. We suggest that travel is a behavior to which intrinsic motivations apply, and that focusing exclusively on the extrinsic motivations to travel runs the risk of substantially underestimating the demand for travel, and the resistance to policies attempting to reduce it or to technologies (notably, information and communication technologies) expected to (partly) replace it. We offer a number of suggestions for improving standard travel surveys to help obtain the data needed to explore intrinsic motivations more fully. As better data become available, travel behavior models can be refined to partly account for such motivations. We believe that the resulting insights will be extremely valuable to policy-makers, planners, and behavioral scholars.

Keywords:

• autotelic
• experiential
• hedonic
• motivation
• travel behavior
• utilitarian

Acknowledgements

The title of this paper was inspired by the theme of a student-organized research conference at UC Davis, 26–27 June 2003: “What Will Move You?” The authors are grateful to Tim Schwanen for his suggestions of relevant literature on motivations to travel. We are also grateful to Filippo dal Fiore for catalyzing the creation of this paper, and for his valuable feedback on the manuscript. The comments of several anonymous referees have improved an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Portions of Sections 2.1, 3.2.1, and 3.2.2 of this paper appear in a companion paper (Dal Fiore, Mokhtarian, Salomon, & Singer, 2014). There is essentially no other overlap between the two papers.

2. In view of the dominant place of utility maximization in travel behavior modeling, we do not discuss it in any further detail. Schwanen and Lucas (2011) have a useful discussion of the utility maximization approach, together with other approaches to ‘understanding auto motives’ — reasons for car use.

3. The concept that travel can be intrinsically desirable needs little justification when the travel itself is a clearly recreational activity, such as sailing, skiing, hiking, and so on.

4. Human-made physical objects run the gamut from entirely functional (a simple hammer) to entirely hedonic (a work of art with no ‘practical’ purpose). In between those two extremes — in products ranging from clothing to household utensils to buildings, bridges, and sometimes even roads and tunnels — humans seem determined to transcend the purely functional in product design, by adding decoration or artistic flourishes of various kinds. The same fundamental needs for beauty, variety, skill mastery, and self-expressiveness that lead to the ‘excess design’ of physical objects can lead to transcending the utilitarian with respect to activities as well. Consider the Japanese tea ceremony as just one example.

5. This is obviously no proof that they do, only a statement that we have been unable to identify convincing reasons why they must not, and many reasons (both conceptual and empirical, as mentioned in Section 4.1) why they may.

6. Recent scholarship has explored the experience of travel per se, including the development of scales that measure satisfaction with travel (Ettema et al., 2011 and related papers). Such scales, while decidedly useful in their own right, are not designed to distinguish instrumental from experiential motivations to travel, only how travel is perceived (experienced), regardless of the reason for undertaking it.

7. The mention of constraints in a travel context virtually begs the mention of Hägerstrand's (1970) classic triad of “travel constraints”: capability (i.e. physiological, biological and instrumental limitations), coupling (i.e. interactional limitations), and authority (i.e. rules and law). Broadly construed, this set of limitations appears to encompass most plausible constraints on travel.

8. Although we here juxtapose the various terms that have been used on each side of the ‘intrinsic versus extrinsic’ dichotomy observed throughout this paper, we remind the reader that there are distinctions and nuances among each set of terms, so that the words in each group are not completely equivalent and interchangeable.

9. At least, the modifications to the diary proper would be more or less straightforward. But they should be accompanied by careful and clear instructions to the respondent, who may not be used to thinking in terms of traveling for its own sake and who therefore would need some priming to prompt her to analyze her behavior in this light. Getting those instructions ‘right’, especially balancing the competing objectives of clarity and thoroughness against brevity, is no easy feat.

10. The other two options were ‘The activities during the trip were important for me’ and ‘The feelings during the trip were important for me’.

11. p. 7:

[T]here is no such thing as a need … The fallacy of the notion of need follows from … the proposition that [individuals are] always willing to make trade-offs … that is, they are always willing to give up a sufficiently small amount of any good for a sufficiently large amount of other goods.

p. 8:

Using the word ‘need’ as an imperative is semantic trickery … Politicians and others who use that language understand that the word need carries emotional impact. It implies a requirement at any cost; if the need is not met, some unspecified disaster will take place. Such assertions have a far different impact if restated to reflect the facts. The proposition that ‘people want more housing if they can get it cheaply enough’ does not ring out … with the same emotional appeal as ‘people need more housing’.