The 120 Sn(p,pα) 116 Cd reaction at 392 MeV is investigated with the distorted wave impulse approximation (DWIA) framework. We show that this reaction is very peripheral mainly because of the strong absorption of α by the reaction residue 116 Cd, and the α-clustering on the nuclear surface can be probed clearly. We investigate also the validity of the so-called factorization approximation that has frequently been used so far. It is shown that the kinematics of α in the nuclear interior region is significantly affected by the distortion of 116 Cd, but it has no effect on the reaction observables because of the strong absorption in that region.