Understanding Tourist Motivation and Behavioral Intention to Visit a New Chinese Beach Destination- A case study of potential Swedish tourists’ intention to travel to Nordic Village of Hainan Island, China

Abstract: In our thesis, we examined the motivation and travel intention potential Swedish tourists to a new beach destination in China. Two models were developed in this study: one named TBE that was based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and past travel experience to explore whether a modified model could predict tourists’ intention of visitation to a new beach destination; another alternative model named PPA was proposed to test whether tourists’ motivation applied in push and pull framework could be taken used as influencing factors toward attitude construction of the TPB model. The survey data were collected from 232 samples by a self-administrated questionnaire through a web survey. Frequency descriptive, t-test, bivariate correlation and multiple regression analysis were employed to test the research models and hypotheses. A tourism development project located in Hainan Island, China that was dedicating to attract Swedish tourists was used as a background in this case study. The results indicated that push and pull motivations did have a positive influence toward travel attitude, while travel attitude together with subjective norm, past travel experience and perceived behavioral control all had significant influence toward behavioral intention. Constructive recommendations were offered to enable the destination site attracting more potential Swedish tourists.