Segmenting Responsible Tourists by Motivation - Focusing on Domestic Tourism -

Since the Discussion on responsible tourism sector began in the 1980s, the interest in responsible tourism has increased. Responsible tourism aims to preserve the local culture and environment, and make the benefits return benefits to local stakeholders. This study aims to obtain an empirical understanding of the responsible tourism market by using a segmentation approach to provide better information for responsible tourism marketers in Korea. A self-administered survey was obtained from 471 tourists in seven responsible tourism sites. As for the motivations of responsible tourism, seven factors ('faimly togetherness', 'escape relaxation', 'personal growth', 'social interaction', 'various experience', 'learning' and 'natural experience') were extracted. Six distinct segments were identified based on the motivation: escape from daily life relaxation seekers (19.15%), overall low motivation (7.8%), family togetherness seekers (21.18%). various experience seekers (12.77%), noverlty learning seekers (22.46%) and want-it-all (16.55%). Socio-demographic characteristics and tourism behaviors of each segmentation were also analyzed. The findings should be of interest to practitioners of responsible tourism marketing and operation.