Lifestyle segmentation of tourists seeking nature-based experiences: the role of cultural values and travel motives

ABSTRACT

The increasing globalization of markets and the criticality of reaching the right lifestyle segments make the relationship between personal motives and cultural values an important area for academic research and managerial practice. The authors seek to provide an understanding of this relationship in a tourism context, specifically in terms of the links between travel motivations and a set of cultural values – materialism, uncertainty avoidance, horizontal and vertical individualism, and horizontal and vertical collectivism. The study examined whether the importance ratings of cultural values differ across segments of tourists grouped on the basis of their travel motives. An Internet survey was used and the sample included 1546 potential tourists visiting the nature-based destination Fjord Norway. Results showed that travel motives and cultural values can serve as discriminators between lifestyle segments. The three motive segments were the nature and novelty, the status, and the relaxation segment. The segments evaluate the destination differently and vary in behavioral intentions.

KEYWORDS:

• Travel motives
• cultural values
• lifestyle segmentation
• nature-based tourism

Notes

1. CHAID (Chi Square Automatic Interaction Detection) is an algorithm that divides data into exclusive and exhaustive segments by merging those categories of an independent variable that are homogeneous with respect to the dependent variable and maintains all categories that are heterogeneous.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nina M. Iversen

Nina M. Iversen is professor, Norwegian School of Business, 0442 Oslo, Norway (E-mail: [email protected]).

Leif E. Hem

Leif E. Hem is professor, Norwegian School of Economics, Institute of Strategy and Management, Helleveien 30, 5035 Bergen, Norway (E-mail: [email protected]).

Mehmet Mehmetoglu

Mehmet Mehmetoglu is professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Institute of Psychology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway (E-mail: [email protected]).