Self Determination Theory and Wellness Tourism: What motivates choice?
Open Access
Author:
Morgan, Olivia Anna
Area of Honors:
Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Dr. Anna S Mattila, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Breffni M Noone, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
hospitality health wellness wellness tourism self-determination theory tourism
Abstract:
With the recent decline in health, there has been an increased interest in wellbeing. This interest has generated a new, rapidly growing sector of tourism called wellness tourism, best defined as a destination aimed at rejuvenating the body, mind, and spirit of the partaker. Within this sector, there are three dominant packages: spiritual, physical, and emotional. Using the self-determination theory, which evaluates internal versus external motivation, booking interest in, and attitude towards the three wellness packages were assessed. A 3 package type (spiritual vs. physical vs. emotional wellness) X 2 motivation (intrinsic vs. extrinsic) quasi-experiment was performed using 200 participants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. This study found that booking interest in, and attitude towards, the three packages were positively affected by internal motivations and negatively affected by external motivations. Based on these results, wellness tourism managers can properly cater their marketing materials to the internal motivations that dominate wellness tourists’ decisions.