Visitors’ motivations and behaviours at pilgrimage centres: push and pull perspectives

ABSTRACT

Religious tourism is one of the fastest growing and changing sectors of the world tourism market because of, among other things, social-cultural changes in the 20^th and 21^st centuries (i.e. the development of transport and mass tourism, globalization, secularization, and commercialization). Pilgrimage centres are important destinations also for general heritage tourism. Despite their global importance and growing popularity, there is still a lack of the knowledge about the complexity, multidimensionality, and diversity of journeys to pilgrimage centres. Here, the results from a comprehensive empirical study on visitors’ motivations and behaviours to pilgrimage centres in Poland are presented for the first time, to provide insight into contemporary religious tourism. The diversity and dependence of the main motivations, additional motivations, behaviours, and socio-demographic research sample indicators were analyzed. The motivations and behaviours are varied and multi-faceted, and include mainly religious and tourist factors, but are also related to cultural heritage tourism, recreation, social/family life, and additional factors. A conceptual model is presented of the motivations of pilgrimage centre visitors based on the push-pull motivational framework, adapted to religious tourism, taking into account the importance of the religious element – as an innovative contribution – summarized the studies.

KEYWORDS:

• motivations
• religious tourism
• push-pull motivation framework
• pilgrimage centres
• Poland

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the pilgrimage centres’ hosts for the opportunity to conduct surveys and the project’s interviewers (graduate students in the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University) for their valuable involvement.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Justyna Liro, PhD, is an assistant in the Research Team on Geography of Religion at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Her research focuses on tourism geography, geography of religion, and historical geography, particularly on contemporary religious tourism, changes in pilgrimage centres, theories of visitors’ motivations and behaviour in the context of the socio-cultural changes in the 20^th and 21^st c. Emerging Scholar Award 2020 holder from Tourism & Leisure Research Network.

Notes

1 The indications for a commercial/shopping motivation in some cases might depend on the presence of infrastructure in sanctuary.

2 Behind the shopping motivations’ indications often lies buying devotional items and souvenirs from the pilgrimage centres and Poland in general.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University in Krakow from the funding for the development of young scientists in 2017–2018. Project no. DS/MND/WGiG/IGiGP/2017/14 entitled Motivations, experiences, and behaviours of people visiting pilgrimage centres in Poland – Characteristics and trends in the light of contemporary socio-cultural changes; Head: Dr Justyna Liro.