Why Don’t They Travel? The Role of Constraints and Motivation for Non-Participation in Tourism

Abstract

Between one-quarter and one-third of the population in developed economies do not travel, but our understanding of this group is rather limited. Studies looking at constraints and motivation often treat non-travelers as an homogeneous group compared to a spectrum of traveler types. Non-travel is also often implied as being a deficit rather than a voluntary decision. A mixed-method approach is applied in this study to explicitly explore the variety within non-travelers in general and voluntary non-travelers in particular. Qualitative interviews with non-travelers were used to gain a more in-depth understanding of the underlying reasons for non-travel. Non-travelers were then segmented based on constraints and motivation in a large-scale survey representative for Germany. The resulting non-traveler typology clearly shows distinct non-travelers types. By adding a pro non-travel preference instead of using deficit-oriented arguments, voluntary types of non-travelers were identified. This implies that non-travel is not necessarily something people want to overcome.

Keywords:

• Motivation
• non-traveler
• travel constraint
• travel participation
• voluntary non-travel

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to our interviewees who participated in the qualitative interviews as well as the participants in our questionnaire survey. We would also like to thank our colleagues who commented on the draft of this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under Grant Number SCHM 850/21–1.