There has been general recognition in the literature that the attractiveness of a destination reflects the feelings, beliefs, and opinions that tourists have about a destination's perceived ability to provide satisfaction in relation to their special vacation needs (Gearing et al., 1974; Mayo & Jarvis, 1981; Var et al.,1977). In this sense, attractiveness cannot be measured without explicit reference to the visitor context or to a consumer-based approach (Chen & Hsu, 2000; Ferrario, 1979;
Goodrich, 1979; Haahti, 1986; Hu & Ritchie, 1993; Kim, 1998; Nyberg, 1994;
Ritchie & Goeldner, 1987; Tang & Rochananond, 1990). More specifically, the attractiveness of a tourist destination can only be defined in relation to the perceptions of someone who considers it an attraction. In other words, the evaluation of attractiveness will rely on some measures of visitor perception. Accordingly, the conceptual framework for this study is based on the belief that tourist perceptions are experiences of products are at the very root of the attractiveness of a tourist destination.
The conceptualisation of a destination, like other goods and services, is composed of a number of multi-attributes that together will determine its attractiveness to a particular tourist in a specific period of time. In essence, apart from primary resources, ie. natural factors, human-made assets, secondary or supporting resources such as accommodation, transportation, accessibility, infrastructure, recreational and shopping facilities, services, reception, and cost or price must not be disregarded
when measuring the total attractiveness of a tourist destination. This derives the application of a multi-attribute attitude model, which has been used to assess attitudes and perceptions of tourists after experiencing the tourism products in the destination.
Figure 6: A Conceptual Framework of the Investigation of the Attractiveness of Tourist Destination
Figure 6 has conceptualised the framework of the investigation of the attractiveness of the tourist destination. It is composed of four main elements: tourist's black box, marketing stimuli, tourist responses, and tourist behavioural intention. Tourist's black box comprises tourist's internal and external characteristics. Internal characteristic refers to tourist's travel motivation. External characteristics include tourists' travel purpose, age, gender, education level, occupation, income, marital
status, and family size. Marketing stimuli refer to tourism products at the destination, which involve primary and secondary resources. After tourists experiencing tourism products, they will respond to the stimuli by evaluating the products in which affect their travel behavioural intention in the future.
3.8.1 Multi-Attribute Attitude Model: Fishbein Model
With regard to the measurement of tourist attractiveness, it was apparent from the review that there is not yet an accepted theory to replace the multi-attribute models (Pink, 2000). This present study, therefore, applied a multi-attribute attitude for evaluating the attractiveness of Chiang Mai Province. Multi-attribute models have been popular among marketing researchers. Toe models have been constructed to resolve the problem that a simple response does not always indicate everything the researchers need to know about why the consumers feel a certain way toward a product. The models assume that a consumer's attitude, that is, evaluation of an attitude object (A O ) will depend on the beliefs he or she has about several or many attributes of the object. In this sense, the use of a multi-attribute attitude model implies that an attitude toward a product or brand can be predicted by identifying these specific beliefs and combining them to derive a measure of the consumer's overall attitude. Toe most influential multi-attribute model called the Fishbein model is named after the primary developer, Martin Fishbein (Zikmund, 2000).
Although the model has been widely modified in the marketing discipline, there are, however, basic elements of the models exist. They include attributes, beliefs, and importance. Attributes are characteristics of the A O • Most models assume that these
I
attributes that consumers consider when evaluating the AO• For example, in this application, 'Natural Factors' are one of the attributes of the attractiveness of a tourist destination.
Beliefs are cognition about the specific A O • A belief measure evaluates the extent to which the consumers (in this sense - tourists) perceive that a destination has, at least, a particular attribute. Importance weights reflect the relative priority of an attribute to the consumers (ie. tourists). Although, an AO can be regarded on a number of attributes, some are likely to be more important than others, (ie. those attributes will be given greater weight). Also, these weights are likely to differ across consumers (ie. tourists) (Zikmund, 2000).
The Fishbein attitude model has been applied to obtain the overall or global destination attractiveness in this present study. It is formulated as AO = "I_ Aili,
i=l
where A O denotes a tourist's overall attitude, that is, the overall or global attractiveness of the destination; i refers to attribute or touristic characteristic; Ii denotes the tourist's strength of belief or perceptions or the cognition that the destination is associated with attribute i, A i denotes the tourist's affective evaluation of attribute i, and n refers to number of attributes. Overall, The perceptual/cognitive evaluations refer to beliefs or knowledge about a destination's attributes whereas affective evaluation refers to feelings toward, or attachment to it. A result of both perceptual/cognitive and affective evaluations of that place, therefore, form an overall or global attractiveness of a destination.
3.8.2 Internal and External Characteristics of Tourists
Other factors that are likely to influence tourists' perceived importance of destination attributes are tourists' internal and external characteristics. An internal characteristic is concerned with travel motivation, whereas external characteristics involve socio
economic demographics comprising place of origin, travel purpose, age, gender, education level, occupation, income, marital status, and family size.
Tourist customers are not homogeneous. In order to understand the customer, tourism markets may be divided into a number of segments, which share a set of common purchasing and behavioural characteristics (Dickman, 1999; Gartner, 1996;
Hall, 1998; Middleton, 2001; Mill & Morrison, 1985; Morrison, 1996; Swarbrooke
& Homer, 1999). The characteristics of tourists can be measured objectively in terms of demographic, geographic, and socio-economic factors, and travel purpose/use of segmentation (Gunn, 1994) whereas motivation/expectation and preferred experiences may only be inferred (Hall, 1998). Both the objective and the inferred measures of tourist characteristics can, in tum, be examined from the general and the situation-specific perspective as shown in Figure 7
The model of tourist characteristics illustrated in Figure 7 indicates various variables that are assumed to be influential in a tourist's perceived attractiveness of the destination and his/her perceived importance of destination attributes. Demographic and socioeconomic factors or the personal characteristics of the tourists include age, gender, education level, occupation, household income, marital status, and family size. The geographic factor, regarded as a cultural factor, is the country of origin of the tourist. Another segment that may influence tourists' evaluation of perceptions of
which includes leisure/recreation, education, business, visiting friends and relatives, and others. All these variables can be measured objectively whereas psychological factor such as travel motivation is evaluated by inferred method. The measurement of the motivation of tourists has been undertaken in this study by using Pearce's 'Travel Motivation Ladder' or 'Travel Career Ladder' adjusted by Kim and Lee (2000) (see Figure 4, and Figure 8)
General Situation specific
Demographic, and socio-economic Attitudes and preferences
factor particular towards tourism
products or destinations a) age
b) gender
c) education level Perceptions and/or attitudes on
d) occupation attractiveness and destination
e) income attributes of Chiang Mai
marital status Province, Thailand
Measures Travel characteristics u Behavioural Intentions
Inferred
Travel purpose Likelihood of repeat
visitation Psychological factors
, .
� �..
Travel Motivation
Figure 7: The Model of Tourist Characteristics
(Source: Adapted from Bryant and Morrison (1980, p.3, cited in Gunn, 1994, p. 38; Hall, 1998, p. 52))
In relation to situation specific, the tourist's attitudes (and preferences) are particular for the assessment has been taken under the specific conditions: towards the specific tourism products (ie. eight selected attributes) and the specific destination, Chiang
1 .
2.