Relationship between motivation and business sustainability: A study on homestay entrepreneurs in Malaysia

Abstract

Homestay program has a very good impact on the country's economy and tourism sector especially for the benefit of locals. The study intends to examine the relationship between sustainability and motivation of homestay entrepreneurs in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The study applied both quantitative and qualitative methods involving face-to-face interview and questionnaire instrument for data collection. 258 entrepreneur respondents took part by mean of simple random sampling method. The study reported a significant relationship between sustainability and motivation. The findings also identified that the homestay entrepreneurs in Malaysia's East Coast states were highly motivated by internal factors to involve in the homestay business, even though they were facing many challenges and problems in managing their homestay businesses. This results will be benefitted to the homestay entrepreneurs to improve and enhancing their homestay business in future. Nonetheless, collaboration and networking with government and associations are still needed to further improve the development of homestay program.