Low-Carbon Travel Motivation and Constraint: Scales Development and Validation

Abstract

Low-carbon travel has emerged as a topic of interest in tourism and academia. Studies have offered reasons tourists may engage in low-carbon travel; however, these explanations are scattered throughout the literature and have yet to be integrated into low-carbon travel motivation and constraint constructs. This study develops a low-carbon travel motivation scale (LCTMS) and a low-carbon travel constraint scale (LCTCS). It performs reliability and validity testing to measure the low-carbon travel motives and obstacles. Items were collected primarily by literature review, and, then, by surveys of 382 tourists from low-carbon travel destinations and 390 from non-low-carbon travel destinations. Through a rigorous scale development process, this study identifies six dimensions of the LCTMS (environmental protection, experience-seeking, escape or social connection, industry pleas and measures for environmental protection, low-carbon products, and green transportation) and four dimensions of the LCTCS (intrapersonal constraints, interpersonal constraints, structural constraints, and the not a travel option).

Diamond Model of Green Commitment and Low-Carbon Travel Motivation, Constraint, and Intention

“…According to the result of the confirmatory factor analysis and hypothesis test of model fit and theoretical structure model above, the reliability and validity of scales in this questionnaire are in line with previous studies [ 9 , 14 , 23 , 37 ]. This represents that the scales are stable for the survey.…”

“…Green commitment measurements were adopted from Longoni, Gollwitzer and Oettingen [ 38 ], with a total of 19 questions. Low-carbon travel motivation measurements were taken from [ 14 ] and Dai [ 9 ] and Dai, Shie, Chu and Wu [ 23 ] with 24 questions. Low-carbon travel constraint measurements were adopted from Dai [ 9 ] and Dai, Shie, Chu and Wu [ 23 ], with 23 questions.…”

“…Low-carbon travel motivation measurements were taken from [ 14 ] and Dai [ 9 ] and Dai, Shie, Chu and Wu [ 23 ] with 24 questions. Low-carbon travel constraint measurements were adopted from Dai [ 9 ] and Dai, Shie, Chu and Wu [ 23 ], with 23 questions. Low-carbon travel intention was adopted from Kuo and Dai [ 31 ] and Kuo and Dai [ 11 ], with a total of four questions.…”

“…The pre-test was conducted by purposed sampling during 1–7 October 2019. In this study, a total of 200 questionnaires were distributed in the two places by using the method of field survey [ 23 ]. In order to ensure the validity of the questionnaire, this study provided small gifts to the respondents and finally recovered 200 valid questionnaires.…”

“…Xu, et al [ 22 ] argued that tourist motivation is the emotional and cognitive stimulus that causes behavioral intent. Dai, et al [ 23 ] pointed out that understanding tourists’ Low-carbon travel motivation will help us identify the factors that drive tourists to participate in low-carbon travel.…”