Travel intention : a study of chinese university students.

• Main Authors: Lin, Yewei., Li, Yingying., Ng, Pei Ru.
• Other Authors: Joan C Henderson
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/51500
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This study aims to examine various push, pull and general environment factors as well as their possible correlations with travel intention of Chinese university students. We also seek to gain an understanding of the moderating effect of information sources on the relationships between the different factors and travel intention. According to the push-pull model, we have come up with two dimensions, namely travel desires and destination attributes, together with general environment factors as our independent variables. Under each dimension, more factors are identified based on literature reviews, hence leading to the formulation of 7 hypotheses in total. Convenience and snowballing sampling were the main methods adopted for data collection, through Chinese social media platforms such as RenRen and Weibo. A self-administered online survey was developed with Chinese university students as our target population. At the end of the survey period, 245 responses were collected and 201 were shortlisted as suitable and valid responses after data screening and cleaning. With both descriptive and inferential analysis, all but two of our hypotheses were supported with Pearson coefficients higher than 0.2, indicating a positive correlation with travel intention. The desire for novelty / knowledge gaining proved to be the most important push factor rather than the desire for relaxation / escape as we had initially hypothesised, while general environment factors showed a nil correlation due to reasons related to the method of data analysis. A correlation test was carried out on information sources as well, confirming its moderating effect on strengthening the correlations. In addition, opinions on Singapore as a tourist destination were assessed among Chinese university students in the questionnaire, providing insights on Singapore tourism to facilitate the targeting of the Chinese university students market. Limitations of this study due to self-selection bias and misunderstanding were further discussed, enabling us to take suitable actions to mitigate possible problems. For the purpose of future studies, other types of consumer markets, more dimensions and more relevant research models can be looked into.