A subcultural analysis of tourism motivations

Abstract

Culture has been proposed by marketing theorists as one of the underlying determinants of consumer behavior. This trend necessitates cross-cultural inquiries in tourism. However, investigations into tourism motivation are scarce and have only used nationality or ethnicity as proxies to define culture. The study reported here aimed to fill this gap. Three subcultural groups were identified based on the grid–group cultural theory and their cross-cultural differences and similarities in tourism motivations were examined. It was revealed that in the grid–group dichotomy of cultural types, the dimension of group had a greater influence on individuals’ tourism motivation than grid. The theoretical contributions and limitations of this study are discussed and future studies are proposed.