engleski

Propensity to Travel: What The Macro-data Are Telling Us?

Propensity to travel, loosely defined as willingness of a person to become a tourist, is one of the most fundamental concepts of tourism research. It is deeply rooted into the core of tourism demand, and draws the attention of actors on tourism supply-side. Three of the theoretically most discussed socio-demographic determinants of propensity to travel are: age, education and income. It is quite dogmatically accepted that these three socio-demographic factors immensely influence somebody’s willingness to become a tourist. The aim of the present paper is to examine this stance by conducting an empirical analysis of the determinants of propensity to travel on the macro level. In 2011, the European Parliament and The European Council have adopted the Regulation by which the Member States are obligated to compile annual data on trips of its residents. Accordingly, the data on participation in tourism for personal purposes of EU inhabitants have recently been published by Eurostat. Besides the total number of trips, data on socio-demographic characteristics of EU residents are also publicly available. Those data were used to answer the question which of the determinants of propensity to travel are truly important. In this regard, the abovementioned determinants of propensity to travel are examined on the sample of countries that are members of European Union. Since there are fewer than 30 such countries, the analyzed sample is considered to be small. Nonparametric techniques are thus used in analyzing the data.

propensity to travel; socio-demographic factors of propensity to travel; macro-level analysis; nonparametric statistics

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