Chapter 4 Research Participants’ Characteristics and VFR Tourism Behaviour
4.4 VFR Tourism Behaviour of International PhD Students
4.4.2 VF travel patterns
The VF category was examined further by looking at the students’ engagement in four different VF travel patterns. They were identified in Question 16 of the online survey including: I travel to my friends' place to visit them (Pattern 1); I travel to my friends' place to visit them and then, we travel to other place(s) together (Pattern 2); I travel to my friends' place to visit them and then, travel to other place(s) without them (Pattern 3); and, My friends and I travel to a third place (either domestic or international) that is neither mine nor my friends' place to meet each other (Pattern 4). These patterns were selected based on the researcher’s personal observation and understanding of the literature, and then by exploring possible ways of incorporating friends in VF travel. It represents a matrix of logical possibilities between visiting
friends and spatial travel patterns. In the online survey, the respondents were asked to indicate the extent of their engagement in each pattern on the scale of 0–100, with 0 being ‘never’ and 100 being ‘very likely’.
During the data entry process, the researcher noted that there were a number of occasions when the respondents used the slider to indicate their answer for only some patterns. It was unclear whether the other patterns were left unanswered, or that the respondents intended to leave an answer of zero ‘0’ value on the scale. However, given the visibility of all sliders on the same screen, it was felt unlikely that they had missed those sliders. Therefore, in these cases, when a particular pattern did not clearly receive a value on the scale of likelihood, it was coded as zero ‘0’ value.
Related descriptive results are illustrated in Table 4.9.
Table 4.9 VF travel patterns of the online survey respondents
n Mean (M) Standard Deviation (SD) Pattern 1 (I travel to my friends'
place to visit them) 247 29.27 26.68
Pattern 2 (I travel to my friends' place to visit them and then, we travel to other place(s) together)
247 20.37 24.00
Pattern 3 (I travel to my friends' place to visit them and then, travel to other place(s) without them)
247 13.49 20.21
Pattern 4 (My friends and I travel to a third place (either domestic or international) that is neither mine nor my friends' place to meet each other)
247 17.57 24.11
After the recoding process, a total of 247 valid responses were recorded for this survey question. The most common pattern of VF travel undertaken by the respondents was Pattern 1 with the highest mean score (M=29.27, SD=26.68), followed by Pattern 2 (M=20.37, SD=24.00). In other words, most respondents travelled to their friends’ place to visit them and, often, they would then travel to other places together. The received scores of the other two patterns, while lower, still
indicated the extent of engagement in these patterns. Pattern 4 represents a form of
‘VFR in a third place’ as described in the Literature Review (Section 2.2.2.1). This form was explored further in the focus groups. A more detailed discussion is provided in Section 4.5.1 of this chapter.
The above results indicate that VF travel of the respondents may lead to further group travel outside their friends’ place of residency. Accordingly, VF tourism could be considered as a type of catalytic tourism that facilitates tourist activities not only in the visited destination, but also potentially stimulates more travel to other destinations. It also means a greater contribution to the economy as a whole.
Backer and Lynch (2017) found that family life cycle could influence VFR travel behaviour, which sheds light on the importance of family status on VFR tourism participation. It was also suggested in Section 4.3.3 that family status could be an influencing factor on participation in VFR tourism. Among the demographic characteristics recorded in the online survey was the respondents’ family status. A one-way ANOVA test was conducted to examine the relationship between the respondents’ family status and their reported extent of engaging in the four identified VF patterns. A Bonferroni correction was applied because the analysis was run separately for each of the four patterns. When conducting multiple analyses, the chance for a false positive is higher, thus increasing the likelihood of getting a significant result by pure chance. A Bonferroni correction seeks to protect the analyses from this error (Armstrong, 2014). Hence, a p value of 0.0125 was adopted as the criterion for significance of these one-way ANOVA tests in order to preserve the nominal p value of 0.05. Groups identified under the banner of family status included: ‘single without children’, ‘single with children’, ‘married without children’,
‘married without children’, ‘life partner without children’, ‘life partner with children’, and ‘other’. The result is presented in Table 4.10a.
Table 4.10a One-way ANOVA test results between the respondents’ family status and VF patterns.
VF travel pattern Test result
Pattern 1 F(6,240)=2.94, p=0.009
Pattern 2 F(6,240)=1.46, p=0.19
Pattern 3 F(6,240)=0.59, p=0.74
Pattern 4 F(6,240)=0.86, p=0.53
According to Table 4.10a, the only travel pattern to which family status was significantly related was VF Pattern 1. No significant difference was found between the respondents’ family status and the likelihood of their engagement in the other three patterns. The detailed test result for VF Pattern 1 is presented in Table 4.10b for further discussion.
Table 4.10b Family status and VF Pattern 1 (I travel to my friends' place to visit them)
Dependent variables: Family status n Mean SD
Single without children 100 25.13 20.32
Single with children 4 12.75 7.76
Married without children 48 35.85 31.38
Married with children 61 26.89 27.62
Life partner without children 26 43.96 34.15
Life partner with children 5 14.20 5.76
Other 3 30.00 20.00
Total 247 29.27 26.68
Test results
One-way ANOVA F(6,240)=2.94, p=0.009
Welch p=0.003
Brown-Forsythe p=0.002
As shown in Table 4.10b, there is a significant relationship between the students’
family status and the likelihood of engaging in the VF Pattern 1 [F(6,240)=2.94, p=0.009]. Specifically, post hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score received from the respondents who were single without children (M=25.13, SD=20.32) was significantly different from those who were single with children (M=12.75, SD=7.76). A similar result was found for those who had a life partner without children (M=43.96, SD=34.15), and for those who had a life partner with children (M=14.20, SD=5.76).
Since the numbers of respondents in each family status category who provided their responses to VF Pattern 1 were different (Table 4.10b), Levene’s test for equality of variance was conducted. The result showed that the assumption of homogeneity of
variances for one-way ANOVA test was not met, F(6, 240)=5.8, p<0.001. Therefore, both the Welch and the Brown-Forsythe tests were used, and significant results were found in both tests (p=0.003 and p=0.002, respectively). Hence, the result of the one-way ANOVA test above was reinforced and the conclusion was reconfirmed.
The categories of family status were also recoded into singles (with or without children), married/life partner with children, and married/life partner without children.
One-way ANOVA test was run with these recoded categories as well, and the result shows significant relationship, F(2,240)=6.97, p=0.001. A Tukey’s-b post-hoc test confirmed that the “married/life partner without children” group was a distinct subset of the data. Therefore, the difference between these groups might be caused by the presence (or absence) of children, or the presence (or absence) of a life partner.
Nevertheless, this result suggests the potential relationship between family status and VFR tourism behaviour.