Will the present younger adults become future orbital space tourists?

ABSTRACT

Technological advancements significantly reduce the cost of space travel, thereby making many other activities in space technologically feasible and financially affordable for a larger number of people. This paper considers tourist travel to outer space, that is, beyond the 100-km Karman line altitude accepted by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale as the border between the Earth atmosphere and outer space. Because of the scarcity of literature on the market for space flights, the study investigates factors that affect enthusiasm for becoming an orbital space tourist among those who are interested in space exploration and, at the same time, are younger and educated. We investigate motivations and risk factors as well as the moderating role of involvement, gender, and age in enthusiasm to become an orbital space tourist and compare the findings with the outcomes of previously conducted marketing research.

KEYWORDS:

• Orbital space tourism
• motivations
• risk
• involvement
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Luyu Wang is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Tourism, Hospitality & Event Management at the University of Florida. She studies travel experiences in natural protected areas based on user-generated content. Her research interests also include providing management suggestions for destination managers. She works with Spatial Ecology & Conservation (SPEC) Lab at UF to understand tourists through geospatial analytic methods.

Svetlana Stepchenkova is Associate Professor at the Department of Tourism, Hospitality & Event Management at the University of Florida. Her research interests are in the area of marketing communications, branding, and positive image building. She studies tourism behavior and the effectiveness of destination promotion in situations of strained bilateral relations between nations. She is also interested in usability of user-generated content for managerial decision making in destination management.

Andrei P. Kirilenko is Associate Professor in the Department of Tourism, Hospitality & Event Management at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and held positions at the Center for Ecology & Forest Productivity, Russia, European Forest Institute, Finland, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency laboratory, OR, Purdue University and University of North Dakota. His research interests include big data analysis, data mining, tourism analytics, climate change impacts, and sustainability issues.

Notes

1 https://www.virgingalactic.com/learn/

2 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/09/richard-branson-virgin-galactic-go-public