The Importance of Push and Pull Motivations in Tourist Destination Return Visits

Richard J

Published on: 2023-03-15

Abstract

Understanding the motives of tourists can aid in the tourism industry's risk management. Pull motives are associated with contentment, whereas push motives are associated with repeat visits to tourist destinations. Push factors have a greater impact on repeat visitation than pull factors, and they serve as mediators between attribute satisfactions and return visitation. We anticipate that age and gender will moderate the effects of push and pull factors on repeat visitation. Both push and pull factors will reinforce each other.

To test our hypotheses, we conducted an online survey of repeat tourists who were randomly selected based on their responses to qualifying questions. The data analysis using PLS-SEM confirms our hypothesis that attribute satisfaction and push motives are positively associated with repeat visitation. However, pull motives have no direct or indirect relationship with repeat visitation, but they do reinforce the effect of push motives. Age moderates only pull motives, while neither gender nor age moderate push motives.