Modelling motivation and consumption for cultural experiences

This empirical research aims to advance knowledge about the tourist market in general for attending cultural experiences, such as those offered at cultural attractions as well as the more temporal cultural performances and events. It specifically seeks to understand some of the multiple psychological aspects of relevance to tourists' motivation towards cultural experiences, the underlying dimensions, and the associations and relationships that may occur between them. It adopts a process approach to modelling motivation and consumption for cultural experiences and tests four psychological dispositions: attitudes, motives, benefits sought, and benefits gained. This model and related hypotheses are tested with data for English-speaking Western tourists and then analysed using SEM and MANOVA for gender and age differences. The model is supported for these tourists with no significant differences for gender or age. A complex underlying dimensionality is supported for each of the four constructs in the model and positive associations between the constructs are largely found with two exceptions: a link between attitudes and benefits sought is not supported apart from a mediated relationship via motives, and a largely negative relationship between motives and benefits gained, reveals complex interrelationships that warrant further research.