Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1998

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Human Ecology

Major Professor

Mark McGrath

Committee Members

Carol A. Costello, Ann E. Fairhurst, Gregory C. Petty

Abstract

Since the origin of marketing thought during the post-World War II years, enormous progress has been realized in developing increasingly sophisticated methods for profiling consumers in a variety of specialized businesses, including the hospitality and tourism industry. However, during just the preceding decade, there has been a phenomenal growth in the popularity of heritage tourism, which is exemplified by exploring or tracing one's cultural, ethnic, or national background and heritage. The purpose of this study was to develop a profile of visitors to heritage tourism destinations that was based on lifestyle and activity level preferences and personal values. These psychographic measures were then compared to, and contrasted with, relevant demographic data provided by study participants. The data were collected by surveying visitors at six heritage tourism destinations, all of which shared a number of similar characteristics, including their annual rate of visitation, physical size and configuration, their geographic locations, etc. Most importantly, each destination played a role of national historic significance in the growth and development of the United States. The findings of the study indicated visitors to all of these destinations possessed very homogeneous demographic characteristics: most striking among these were the respective age and educational attainment level of respondents. In considering lifestyle and activity level preferences, respondents at all destinations bore a striking resemblance to each other, based on their aggregate scores to the Plog lifestyle and activity level preferences model. A factor analysis was conducted on responses to items intended to quantify personal values according to the List of Values (LOV), resulting in factor loading into two loci of control, which are typified by "External Orientation" and "Internal Orientation." These psychographic constructs were then subjected to a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) in order to determine significant differences among the respective factor groupings, and according to the demographic variables. Results of these analyses indicated that there were significant differences between respondents' personal values and their lifestyle and activity level preferences by the gender of the respondents.

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