RELATIONSHIPS AMONG SERVICE QUALITY, MOTIVATIONS, AND REVISIT INTENTIONS FOR TAIWANESE SKIERS AND SNOWBOARDERS

Abstract

Overseas ski sport tourism is significantly growing in Taiwan. Ski population in Taiwan has increased over 10 times since 2004. Although the growth of ski population brought positive impacts to the tourism industry, it was still a challenge to develop ski sport because of the small ski population and higher temperature in Taiwan. In order to increase the ski population and interpret why people participated in overseas skiing activities, service quality, motivations and revisit intentions were important factors to explain tourists' behavior in sport tourism. Thus, based on the effective application to measure motivations and service quality, the SERVQUAL and Push Pull Motive theory were adopted to investigate the relationships among service quality, motivations and revisit intentions for Taiwanese skiers and snowboarders in this study.

An online questionnaire was designed based on the push-pull motivations and the SERVQUAL scale to collect quantitative data from two ski groups in Taiwan. The convenience sampling method was conducted in the selection of participants who were Taiwanese tourists and have experienced overseas skiing and snowboarding activities. After the data collection, a total of 207 effective questionnaires were received.

Exploratory factor analysis was employed to construct the internal structure and consistency of the questionnaire for validity and reliability. The data was analyzed by ANOVA and multiple linear regression analysis to identify the difference and the influence between independent and dependent variables. The results indicated that partial push-pull motivations and service quality dimensions differed by sex, age, household income, educational level, frequency of annual participation, skiing hours, riding style, and destination variable. Moreover, "Enjoyment (β = 0.29, t = 4.35, p < 0.01)", "age 26~30 (β = 0.39, t = 2.53, p < 0.05)", "age 31~35 (β = 0.45, t = 2.66, p < 0.01)", "age 36~40 (β = 0.40, t = 2.66, p < 0.01)", and "age > 40 (β = 0.40, t = 2.87, p < 0.01)" offered significant contributions to the revisit intention. The findings provided significant information to the travel agencies in Taiwan and ski resorts in Japan because they shed some light on why different groups participated in skiing and snowboarding activities and revisit the ski resorts. Further, the managers of the ski resorts could design marketing strategies according to the information to increase skiers' visits and create economic benefits.