DRIVING FORCES AND INFLUENCING MECHANISMS OF GOLF TOURISM IN THAILAND

Abstract

In recent years, highly valued by the Thai Tourism and Sports Bureau, sports tourism has made remarkable achievements in Thailand. The rapid development of the industry has provided a lot of research topics related to Thailand's sports tourism, one of which is research on the driving forces of Thai golf tourism. In order to promote Thai golf tourism, it is essential to define the driving factors behind its development whether the focus should be on tourism activities of individual golf tourists or on activities of the whole sports tourism. In view of that, this study attempts to make some useful exploration on the subject of golf tourism under the guidance of interdisciplinary knowledge and specific research methodologies from sciences of management, sociology, tourism and sports. This dissertation examines the influence mechanism between the changes in the demand of the golf tourists choosing to travel to Thailand and their travel behavior through theoretical and methodological induction and summary. Using quantitative research methods, this study conducts a systematic study of the behavior of tourists participating in Thai golf tourism in an effort to fully understand the motivational needs and travel behavioral characteristics of golf tourists in Thailand, which will provide a fundamental foothold for the sustainable and healthy development of golf tourism in Thailand.

By analyzing the travel motivation mechanism of Thai golf tourists, this dissertation clarifies and expounds the influence mechanism between revisit intention and the four factors of tourists' motivation, attitude, risk perception and well-being perception. It draws the following conclusions based on the above logic :(1) An analysis of the response index of the participation motivation in Thai golf tourists shows that the participation motivation can be explained respectively by five potential factors: novelty motivation, attraction motivation, emotional motivation, mental motivation and physical motivation. (2) In the formation mechanism of revisit intention in Thai golf tourism, the four variables --- participation motivation, participation attitude, risk perception and well-being perception--- combine to affect revisit intention. The higher the degree of the four factors, the more likely tourists are to revisit Thailand for golf tours. (3) Participation motivation has a direct positive effect on participation attitude. Participation acts as a partial mediator between participation motivation and revisit intention; participation motivation and risk perception can influence each other. (4) At present, the overall well-being perception of Thai golf tourists is relatively high. The four variables in well-being perception (education, attraction, aesthetics and escapism) have a significant positive impact on happiness perception, and the degrees of influence of the four variables from high to low are entertainment experience, escapist experience, educational experience and aesthetic experience. (5) SEM multi-group analysis has found that there is no significant difference in golf tourists or groups of different genders, ages and incomes in terms of the relationship between different variables and dimensions. But there are significant differences in aesthetic experience for the samples of the education groups. The aesthetic experience of higher-education golf tourist group is significantly higher than that of lower- education group.

Key words: tourism; participation motivation; participation attitude; risk perception; well-being perception; revisit intention; driving force model of golf tourism; structural equation modeling