Examining the Relationship between Tourists’ Personal Value Systems and Novelty-familiarity Preferences

Abstract

Value research has great potentials in understanding tourist motivation and behavior. Although it was unlikely that the market for any particular product could be segmented on the basis of value systems alone, marketers could gain a better understanding of consumers by incorporating values into their research with such traditional variables as demographics and preferences. The current study examined the relationship between tourists’ value systems depicted by Kahle’s List of Values (LOV) and tourists’ travel novelty dimensions revealed by the International Tourist Role (ITR) Scale. The study revealed five value systems of U.S. outbound leisure travelers in the sample. It further demonstrated that a causal relationship between values, attitudes and behaviors of consumers also existed in a tourism context.