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article in press tourism management 26 2005 45­56 an examination of the effects of motivation and satisfaction on destination loyalty a structural model yooshik yoona muzaffer uysalb b a department of tourism management pai chi university 439-6 doma-2dong seo-gu daejeon 302-735 south korea department of hospitality tourism management virginia polytechnic institute and state university 362 wallace hall blacksburg va 24061-0429 usa received 14 november 2001 accepted 29 august 2003 abstract this study offers an integrated approach to understanding tourist motivation and attempts to extend the theoretical and empirical evidence on the causal relationships among the push and pull motivations satisfaction and destination loyalty the research model investigates the relevant relationships among the constructs by using a structural equation modeling approach consequently destination managers should establish a higher tourist satisfaction level to create positive post-purchase tourist behavior in order to improve and sustain destination competitiveness r 2003 elsevier ltd all rights reserved keywords tourist motivation satisfaction destination loyalty structural equation modeling 1 introduction in an increasingly saturated marketplace the success of marketing destinations should be guided by a thorough analysis of tourist motivation and its interplay with tourist satisfaction and loyalty a review of tourism literature reveals an abundance of studies on motivation and satisfaction but destination loyalty has not been thoroughly investigated primarily the tourism studies to date have addressed and examined the constructs of motivation and satisfaction independently the causal relationships with travel motivation satisfaction and destination loyalty have been only conceptually or superficially discussed additionally conceptual clarification distinctions and logical linkages among the constructs have been lacking a review of the literature on motivation reveals that people travel because they are pushed into making travel decisions by internal psychological forces and pulled by the external forces of the destination attributes crompton 1979 dann 1977 uysal jurowski 1994 accordingly satisfaction with travel corresponding author tel +82-42-520-5876 e-mail addresses ysyn@pcu.ac.kr y yoon samil@vt.edu m uysal 0261-5177 see front matter r 2003 elsevier ltd all rights reserved doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2003.08.016 experiences based on these push and pull forces contributes to destination loyalty the degree of tourists loyalty to a destination is reflected in their intentions to revisit the destination and in their recommendations to others oppermann 2000 thus information about tourists loyalty is important to destination marketers and managers this study offers an integrated approach to understanding tourist motivation and attempts to extend the theoretical and empirical evidence on the causal relationships among the push and pull motivations satisfaction and destination loyalty a research model is proposed and tested in the study the model investigates the relevant relationships among the constructs by using a structural equation modeling approach in order to provide a theoretical background for the proposed model the authors first review tourist motivation literature and discuss the concepts of push and pull motivations and then provide a discussion of tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty it is hoped that the results derived from the model will serve as the basis for the development of destination marketing strategies one expected advantage of an improved understanding of these causal relationships is that a solid psychological process or mechanism in the development of loyalty could be demonstrated obviously tourists

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article in press 46 y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 have their own internal and external reasons for traveling mcgehee loker-murphy uysal 1996 however only one motivation force or both could have positive or negative relationships with travel satisfaction it would be of interest to discuss if external sources of motivation have more effect on the level of satisfaction than do internal sources travel satisfaction has been generally used as an assessment tool for the evaluation of travel experiences bramwell 1998 ross iso-ahola 1991 tourists positive experiences of service products and other resources provided by tourism destinations could produce repeat visits as well as positive word-of-mouth effects to potential tourists such as friends and/or relatives bramwell 1998 oppermann 2000 postma jenkins 1997 recommendations by previous visits can be taken as the most reliable information sources for potential tourists recommendations to other people word-of-mouth are one of the most often sought types of information for people interested in traveling this systematic examination of causal relationships among the constructs could facilitate a clearer understanding of the nature of behavior and intentions even if the constructs have been widely applied in studies related to tourists there are still research challenges in the sense of discovering and investigating the causal relationships among the constructs of push and pull motivation satisfaction and destination loyalty into two constructs push travel motivation and pull travel motivation subsequently the model examines the structural causal relationships among the push and pull tourist motivations satisfaction and destination loyalty hypothetically motivation influences tourist satisfaction with travel experiences which then affects destination loyalty the theoretical underpinning of this model is discussed in the following section 3 theoretical overview of constructs 3.1 motivation motivation has been referred to as psychological biological needs and wants including integral forces that arouse direct and integrate a person s behavior and activity dann 1981 pearce 1982 uysal hagan 1993 since a paradigm of tourism is always related to human beings and to human nature it is a complex proposition to investigate why people travel and what they want to enjoy many disciplines have been utilized to explain phenomena and characteristics related to motivation in psychology and sociology the definition of motivation is directed toward emotional and cognitive motives ajzen fishbein 1977 or internal and external motives gnoth 1997 an internal motive is associated with drives feelings and instincts an external motive involves mental representations such as knowledge or beliefs from an anthropological point of view tourists are motivated to escape the routine of everyday life seeking authentic experiences maccannell 1977 from socio-psychological points of view motivation is classified into seeking and avoidance dimensions iso-ahola 1982 in tourism research this motivation concept can be classified into two forces which indicate that people travel because they are pushed and pulled to do so by some forces or factors dann 1977 1981 according to uysal and hagan 1993 these forces describe how individuals are pushed by motivation variables into making travel decisions and how they are pulled or attracted by destination attributes in other words the push motivations are related to the tourists desire while pull motivations are associated with the attributes of the destination choices cha mccleary uysal 1995 crompton 1979 dann 1981 oh uysal weaver 1995 push motivations are more related to internal or emotional aspects pull motivations on the other hand are connected to external situational or cognitive aspects push motivations can be seen as the desire for escape rest and relaxation prestige health and fitness adventure and social interaction family togetherness and excitement crompton 1979 tourists may travel to escape routine and search for authentic experiences pull 2 the proposed hypothetical model fig 1 depicts the hypothetical causal model each component of the model was selected on the basis of the literature review previous studies reveal that customer loyalty is influenced by customers satisfaction bitner 1990 dick basu 1994 oliver 1999 and satisfaction is affected by travel motivation mannell iso-ahola 1987 ross iso-ahola 1991 fielding pearce hughes 1992 the hypothesized causal relationships between satisfaction and destination loyalty is referred to as tourism destination loyalty theory in this study as most of the tourist motivation studies have dealt with push internal forces and pull motivation external forces the hypothetical model breaks down motivation push motivation travel satisfaction destination loyalty pull motivation fig 1 proposed hypothetical model.

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article in press y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 47 motivations are those that are inspired by a destination s attractiveness such as beaches recreation facilities cultural attractions entertainment natural scenery shopping and parks these destination attributes may stimulate and reinforce inherent push motivations mcgehee et al 1996 several studies have been conducted using these perspectives iso-ahloa 1982 pyo mihalik uysal 1989 yuan mcdonald 1990 iso-ahola 1982 argued that individuals perceive a leisure activity as a potential satisfaction-producer for two major reasons the activity may provide certain intrinsic rewards such as a feeling of mastery and competence and it may provide an escape from the routine environment similarly kippendorf 1987 found that tourists are motivated by going away from rather than going toward something and that tourist motivation is self oriented in the above major studies it is generally accepted that push and pull motivations have been primarily utilized in studies of tourist behavior the discoveries and issues undoubtedly play a useful role in attempting to understand a wide variety of different needs and wants that can motivate and influence tourist behavior nevertheless the results and effects of the motivation studies of tourist behavior require more than an understanding of their needs and wants in tourism destination management maximizing travel satisfaction is crucial for a successful business the evaluation of the physical products of destination instrumental performance as well as the psychological interpretation of a destination product expressive attributes are necessary for human actions swan combs 1976 uysal noe 2003 which could be represented as travel satisfaction and destination loyalty since the expressive is more related to emotion whereas instrumental performance is more cognitively oriented expressive experiences truly motivate and contribute to satisfaction instrumental performance includes maintenance attributes which if absent could create dissatisfaction both concepts can be examined within the context of a tourism system representing two major components of the market place namely demand tourist and supply tourism attractions it has been suggested that the instrumental and expressive attributes work in combination to produce overall satisfaction jurowski cumbow uysal noe 1996 uysal noe 2003 4 satisfaction construct undoubtedly satisfaction has been playing an important role in planning marketable tourism products and services tourist satisfaction is important to successful destination marketing because it influences the choice of destination the consumption of products and services and the decision to return kozak rimmington 2000 some researchers have also looked at comparison of standards used in service quality and satisfaction and provided different measures of service quality and satisfaction ekinci riley chen 2001 liljander 1994 an understanding of satisfaction must be a basic parameter used to evaluate the performance of destination products and services noe uysal 1997 schofield 2000 among the tourism literature an assessment of tourist satisfaction has been attempted using various perspectives and theories most of the studies conducted to evaluate consumer satisfaction have utilized models of expectation/disconfirmation chon 1989 francken van raaij 1981 oliver 1980 equity fisk young 1985 oliver swan 1989 norm cadotte woodruff jenkins 1987 and perceived overall performance tse wilton 1988 the following section presents the models that are commonly used for assessing consumer satisfaction first of all according to the expectation-disconfirmation model contributed by oliver 1980 consumers develop expectations about a product before purchasing subsequently they compare actual performance with those expectations if the actual performance is better than their expectations this leads to positive disconfirmation which means that the consumer is highly satisfied and will be more willing to purchase the product again if the actual performance is worse than expectations this leads to negative disconfirmation which means that the consumer is unsatisfied and will likely look for alternative products for the next purchase chon 1989 found that tourist satisfaction is based on the goodness of fit between his/her expectation about the destination and the perceived evaluative outcome of the experience at the destination area which is simply the result of a comparison between his/her previous images of the destination and what he she actually sees feels and achieves at the destination oliver and swan 1989 were interested in equity theory consumer satisfaction can be seen as a relationship between the costs of what the consumer spends and the rewards benefits he/she anticipates here price benefits time and effort are major factors in determining satisfaction heskett sasser schlesinger 1997 thus it can be said that if tourists receive benefits or value based on their time effort and money for travel the destination is worthwhile latour and peat 1979 suggested the norm theory norms serve as reference points for judging the product and dissatisfaction comes into play as a result of disconfirmation relative to these norms several authors replaced `norm with `ideal standard in the literature sirgy 1984 francken and van raaij 1981 hypothesized that leisure satisfaction is determined by the consumers perceived disparity between the preferred

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article in press 48 y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 and actual leisure experiences as well as the perceptions of barriers both internal and external that prevented the consumer from achieving the desired experience this theory uses some form of comparison standard consumers compare a product they have purchased with other products tourists can compare current travel destinations with other alternative destinations or places visited in the past the difference between present and past experiences can be a norm used to evaluate tourist satisfaction therefore comparing current travel destinations with other similar places that they may have visited can assess the satisfaction of tourists tse and wilton 1988 developed a perceived performance model according to this model consumer dissatisfaction is only a function of the actual performance regardless of consumers expectations in other words the actual performance and initial expectations should be considered independently rather than comparing performance with past experiences therefore in this model tourists evaluation of their satisfaction with travel experiences is considered regardless of their expectations this model is effective when tourists do not know what they want to enjoy and experience and do not have any knowledge about their destination circumstances and only their actual experiences are evaluated to assess tourist satisfaction in summary as seen in the above discussion the evaluation of tourist satisfaction needs to be considered in multiple dimensions tourists may have varying motivations for visiting particular destinations and also may have different satisfaction levels and standards therefore a model that integrates the approaches used by previous models may be most effective in assessing tourist satisfaction 5 destination loyalty repeat purchases or recommendations to other people are most usually referred to as consumer loyalty in the marketing literature the concept and degree of loyalty is one of the critical indicators used to measure the success of marketing strategy flavian martinez polo 2001 similarly travel destinations can be considered as products and tourists may revisit or recommend travel destinations to other potential tourists such as friends or relatives however the study of the usefulness of the concept of loyalty and its applications to tourism products or services has been limited even though loyalty has been thought of as one of the major driving forces in the competitive market dimanche havitz 1994 in the last decade tourism or leisure researchers have incorporated the concept of consumer loyalty into tourism products destinations or leisure/recreation activities backman crompton 1991 baloglu 2001 iwasaki havitz 1998 lee backman backman 1997 mazanec 2000 pritchard howard 1997 selin howard cable 1988 generally loyalty has been measured in one of the following ways 1 the behavioral approach 2 the attitudinal approach and 3 the composite approach jacoby chestnut 1978 the behavioral approach is related to consumers brand loyalty and has been operationally characterized as sequence purchase proportion of patronage or probability of purchase it has been debated that the measurement of this approach lacks a conceptual standpoint and produces only the static outcome of a dynamic process dick basu 1994 this loyalty measurement does not attempt to explain the factors that affect customer loyalty namely tourist loyalty to the products or destinations may not be enough to explain why and how they are willing to revisit or recommend these to other potential tourists in the attitudinal approach based on consumer brand preferences or intention to buy consumer loyalty is an attempt on the part of consumers to go beyond overt behavior and express their loyalty in terms of psychological commitment or statement of preference tourists may have a favorable attitude toward a particular product or destination and express their intention to purchase the product or visit the destination thus loyalty measures consumers strength of affection toward a brand or product as well as explains an additional portion of unexplained variance that behavioral approaches do not address backman crompton 1991 lastly the composite or combination approach is an integration of the behavioral and attitudinal approaches backman crompton 1991 it has been argued that customers who purchase and have loyalty to particular brands must have a positive attitude toward those brands however this approach has limitations in that not all the weighting or quantified scores may apply to both the behavioral and attitudinal factors and they may have differing measurements even some researchers have discounted only the behavioral or attitudinal approach and have suggested integrating the two backman crompton 1991 iwaskaki havitz 1998 thus the reviewed literature suggests that a full understanding of loyalty need to consider both motivation and satisfaction constructs simultaneously 6 study site and sample the data for this study were collected by a self-administered questionnaire method in northern cyprus located on the mediterranean sea northern cyprus offers archeological and historical sites with natural beauty and warm sandy beaches the pre-tested

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article in press y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 49 questionnaire was initially developed in two languages english and turkish a total of five hundred questionnaires were distributed to the tourists staying in the most well known hotels in northern cyprus 7 questionnaire design and research variables in order to measure tourist motivation this study utilizes pull and push motivation variables the push motivation construct that is related to internal motivations consists of 24 items while the pull motivation construct that is associated with external forces includes 28 items both of the motivation variables were developed on the basis of a review of the related literature and were modified to apply to the research site and target population a four point likert-type scale was used as the response format for the motivation variables with assigned values ranging from 1 being not at all important to 4 being very important four different questions were developed to apply consumer satisfaction theories into actual satisfaction with travel experiences in northern cyprus these are 1 how does northern cyprus in general rate compared to what you expected 1=much worse than i expected and 5=much better than i expected 2 was this visit worth your time and effort 1=definitely not worth it and 5 definitely well worth it 3 overall how satisfied were you with your holiday in northern cyprus 1=not at all satisfied and 4=very satisfied and 4 how would you rate northern cyprus as a vacation destination compared to other similar places islands/countries that you may have visited 1=much worse and 5=much better three indicators measured tourist destination loyalty as the ultimate dependent construct these are two indicators related to revisitation and one indicator pertaining to recommendation to friends and relatives the revisitation questions were as follows 1 in the next two years how likely is it that you will take another vacation to northern cyprus 1=not likely at all and 4=very likely and 2 please describe your overall feelings about your visit 1=this visit was very poor and i will not come again and 3=this visit was so good that i will come again the recommendation question was as follows 1 will you suggest northern cyprus to your friends/relatives as a vacation destination to visit 1=not likely and 3=definitely 8 data analysis and results the properties of the four research constructs two exogenous 1 push and 2 pull travel motivation and two endogenous 1 tourist satisfaction and 1 destination loyalty in the proposed model were tested with a lisrel procedure of structural equation modeling sem joreskog sorbom 1996 and the maximum likelihood ml method of estimation and the twostage testing process were adopted correlation matrices and standard deviations were used to test a hypothesized model in structural equation modeling finally completely standardized solutions were utilized in reporting the results sem is designed to evaluate how well a proposed conceptual model that contains observed indicators and hypothetical constructs explains or fits the collected data bollen 1989a b hoyle 1995 yoon gursoy chen 2001 it also provides the ability to measure or specify the causal relationships among sets of unobserved latent variables while describing the amount of un-explained variance davies goode mazanec moutinho 1999 turner reisinger 2001 clearly the hypothesized model in this study was designed to measure causal relationships among the unobserved constructs that were set up on the basis of prior empirical research and theory the sem procedure was an appropriate solution for this proposed hypothetical model out of 500 questionnaires distributed a total of 148 usable questionnaires were collected yielding a 29.6 response rate missing values outliers and distribution of all measured variables were examined to purify the data and reduce systematic errors serious missing values were not found and those missing observations were managed by a listwise procedure prior to lisrel analyses an exploratory factor analysis efa was performed only for purposes of reducing the number of variables in both push and pull travel motivation constructs the underlying factors derived from efa were represented as correlations among sets of many interrelated variables hair anderson tatham black 1998 using varimax rotation the latent root criterion of 1.0 was used for factor inclusion and a factor loading of 0.40 was used as the benchmark to include items in a factor then the included items within a factor were calculated to create a composite factor all of these procedures were performed using spss 10 subsequently these composite factors were treated as indicators to measure a construct this procedure may help to decrease multicollinearity or error variance correlations among indicators in the confirmatory factor analysis of the measurement model such errors should be avoided as much as possible in structural equation modeling procedures bollen 1989a the results of efa analyses determined significantly correlated factors including eight push travel motivations and ten pull travel motivations tables 1 and 2 these factor analyses were acceptable because at least two significant loadings for any one factor were loaded as well as all of the variables that were included in the factors thus there was no chance of losing

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article in press 50 table 1 the results of efa push motivations push factors factor 1 exciting being physically active meeting people of opposite sex finding thrills and excitement rediscovering myself factor 2 knowledge/education experiencing new/different lifestyles trying new food visiting historical places meeting new people being free to act how i feel factor 3 relaxation doing nothing at all getting a change from a busy job factor 4 achievement going places friends have not been talking about the trip rediscovering past good times factor 5 family togetherness visiting places my family came from visiting friends and relatives being together as a family factor 6 escape getting away from the demands at home experiencing a simpler lifestyle factor 7 safety/fun feeling safe and secure being entertained and having fun adventure of reduced air fares factor 8 away from home and seeing feeling at home away from home seeing as much as possible total variance explained factor loading 0.79 0.78 0.72 0.46 11.42 0.79 0.79 0.66 0.60 0.48 10.53 0.80 0.72 7.63 0.81 0.81 0.53 7.23 0.74 0.70 0.48 5.91 0.78 0.58 5.00 0.83 0.73 0.42 4.43 0.83 0.69 70.40 2.90 3.41 3.13 2.43 3.00 2.27 3.07 explained variance 18.30 composite mean 2.62 y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 1=not at all important 4=very important kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy=0.52 bartlett s test of sphericity po0.000 any information in measuring travel motivation constructs from reviewing the mean scores of the composite indicators it was found that `safety fun m=3.41 `escape m=3.13 `knowledge education m=3.07 and `achievement m=3.00 were perceived respectively as important factors in push travel motivation `cleanness shopping m=3.49 `reliable weather safety m=3.35 `different culture m=3.28 and `water activities m=3.07 were considered as important factors in pull travel motivation consequently these push and pull travel motivations were employed in lisrel procedures 9 measurement model first a confirmatory factor analysis cfa of the measurement model specifying the posited relationships of the observed indicators to the latent constructs with all constructs allowed to be inter-correlated freely was tested according to anderson and gerbing 1988 confirmatory measurement models should be evaluated and re-specified before measurement and structural equation models are examined simultaneously thus before testing the measurement model overall each construct in the model was analyzed separately since an item having a coefficient alpha below 0.30 is unacceptable it is recommended that it be deleted from further analysis joreskog 1993 consequently one indicator in terms of the push travel motivation construct was removed then the chi-square was not significant chi-square=19.12 po0.12 but other fit indices indicated an acceptable fit with the data gfi=0.96 cfi=0.91 nfi=0.81 in the pull travel motivation construct four indicators were removed and the result of chi-square was 9.15 po0.42 other fit indices exhibited an acceptable level gfi=0.98 cfi=1.00 nfi=0.94 a total of 12 indicators for exogenous variables and 7 indictors of endogenous variables 4 from satisfaction and 3 from destination loyalty were used in the

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article in press y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 table 2 the results of efa pull motivations pull factors factor 1:modern atmospheres activities modern cities exotic atmosphere casino and gambling live theaters/concerts first class hotels factor 2 wide space activities budget accommodation wide spaces to get away from crowds variety of activities to see factor 3 small size reliable weather manageable size reliable weather personal safety factor 4 natural scenery outstanding scenery mountainous areas factor 5 inexpensive restaurants tennis factor 6 different culture quality beach interesting and friendly local people different culture historic old cities factor 7 cleanness shopping cleanness shopping reliance/privacy factor 8 night life local cuisine night life and entertainment local cuisine factor 9 interesting town village interesting town/village high quality restaurants factor 10 water activities seaside water sports total variance explained factor loading 0.86 0.65 0.58 0.53 0.52 7.66 0.76 0.68 0.57 7.47 0.73 0.70 0.63 7.00 0.83 0.71 6.96 ­0.83 0.68 6.78 0.82 0.52 0.41 0.41 6.58 0.74 0.72 0.48 6.52 0.79 0.40 6.00 0.80 0.69 5.46 0.82 0.51 70.10 3.07 2.84 3.00 3.49 3.28 2.55 2.94 3.35 3.05 explained variance 9.74 composite mean 2.52 51 1=not at all important 4=very important kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy=0.52 bartlett s test of sphericity po0.000 measurement model in testing the measurement model it was modified so that it came to represent the theoretical causal model of interest in this study indicators having less than 0.30 of coefficient alpha were deleted and this theoretical model was evaluated and revised until a theoretically meaningful as well as statistically acceptable model was achieved in particular one of the indicators of destination loyalty on exogenous variables was highly correlated with one indicator in the pull motivation construct thus after examining the model fits of the overall measurement model that excludes the correlated indicator one indicator was deleted because the model without this indicator produced better-fit indices the fit of the indicators to the construct and construct reliability and validity were tested here basically reliability refers to the consistency of measurement while validity refers to the extent to which an instrument measures what it is intended to measure hatcher 1994 as shown in table 3 six indicators of exogenous variables for travel motivation three indicators for tourist satisfaction and two indicators for destination loyalty are identified the results of the measurement model with four constructs and 11 indicators were derived from confirmatory factor analysis cfa this measurement model described the nature of the relationship between latent constructs and the manifest indicators that measured those latent constructs three types of overall model fit measures were utilized in this study absolute fit measures afm incremental fit measures ifm and parsimonious fit measures pfm an absolute fit index was used to directly evaluate how

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article in press 52 y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 table 3 overall cfa for the modified measurement model n=148 construct indicators push travel motivation ex relaxation f3 family togetherness f5 safety fun f7 pull travel motivation ex small size reliable weather f3 cleanness shopping f7 night life local cuisine f8 tourists satisfaction ed expectation-satisfaction worth visiting comparison with other places destination loyalty ed recommendations to friends/relatives overall feeling to revisit completely standardized loading t-value 0.43 4.67 0.59 6.37 0.58 6.36 construct indicator reliability 0.69 0.19 0.34 0.34 0.88 0.76 0.14 0.54 0.70 0.53 0.50 0.43 0.87 0.62 0.50 variance extracted error variance 0.44 0.38 0.50 0.25 0.73 0.07 0.19 0.28 0.44 0.48 0.68 0.69 0.78 0.16 0.16 0.87 10.48 0.38 4.40 0.73 8.81 0.73 9.05 0.71 8.77 0.65 7.97 0.79 9.71 0.70 8.63 ex=exogenous variable ed=endogenous variable table 4 goodness-of-fit indices for the modified measurement model n=148 absolute fit measures w 2 incremental fit measures rmsr 0.03 rmsea 0.03 null w 490.43 55df 2 parsimonious fit measures nnfi 0.96 pnfi 0.59 cfi 0.97 ifi 0.97 rfi 0.85 gfi 0.95 agfi 0.91 36 43.87 p=0.17 w2=chi-square gfi=goodness-of-fit index rmsr=root mean square residual rmsea=root mean square error of approximation agfi=adjusted goodness-of-fit nnfi=nonnormed fit index pnfi=parsimonious normed fit index cfi=comparative fit index ifi=incremental fit index rfi=relative fit index well the priori theoretical model fits the sample data and an incremental fit index assessed the proportionate fit by comparing a target model with a more restricted nested baseline model hu bentler 1995 a parsimonious fit measure was used to diagnose whether model fit has been achieved by over fitting the data with too many coefficients in this study all three types of goodness of fit indices indicated that the overall measurement model was acceptable in that the proposed model fit the collected data with a sample size of 148 w2 36 43.87 p=0.17 goodness-of-fit index gfi 0.95 root mean square residual rmsr 0.03 root mean square error of approximation rmsea 0.03 adjusted goodness-of-fit agfi 0.91 nonnormed fit index nnfi 0.96 parsimonious normed fit index pnfi 0.59 comparative fit index cfi 0.97 incremental fit index ifi 0.979 and relative fit index rfi 0.85 table 4 after assessing the overall model the psychometric properties of each latent construct were evaluated separately through examining the completely standardized loading error variance the construct reliability and the variance extracted as seen in table 3 the tvalue associated with each of the standardized loadings exceeded the critical level 2.58 po0.05 the construct reliability of all five constructs was close and exceeded the recommended level of 0.70 0.69 0.88 0.70 and 0.87 thus it can be said that the psychometric properties of each respective latent construct especially for the purpose of this research are acceptable 10 structural equation model having assessed the measurement model an initial theoretical model was examined with two gamma paths and one beta path since the chi-square is heavily influenced by the sample size bollen long 1993 other goodness-of-fit indices are suggested to help the model evaluation bentler 1990 joreskog sorbom 1996 the review of the initial theoretical model indicated that the chi-square value 60.82 with 38 of df was not significant but other fit indices indicated a quite acceptable level gfi=93 rmsr=0.05,

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article in press y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 table 5 goodness-of-fit measures for the structural equation model n=148 absolute fit measures w t 2 53 incremental fit measures rmsr 0.05 rmsea 0.06 null w 55 493.43 55 493.43 2 parsimonious fit measures nnfi 0.90 pnfi 0.60 cfi 0.93 ifi 0.94 rfi 0.80 gfi 0.93 agfi 0.88 38 60.82 p=0.00 37 43.85 p=0.20 r 0.95 0.03 0.03 0.91 0.96 0.61 0.97 0.97 0.85 t=theoretical model r=revised model w2=chi-square gfi=goodness-of-fit index rmsr=root mean square residual rmsea=root mean square error of approximation agfi=adjusted goodness-of-fit nnfi=nonnormed fit index pnfi=parsimonious normed fit index cfi=comparative fit index ifi=incremental fit index rfi=relative fit index table 6 sequential chi-square testing of model comparison comparison model measurement model vs theoretical model theoretical model vs revised model revised model vs measurement model d.f difference 2 1 1 w2 difference 16.95 16.97 0.02 p o0.05 o0.05 >0.05 between the revised model and the measurement model revealed a non-significant result w2 1 0.02 p>0.05 suggesting that the revised model is not different from the measurement model as a result the revised model was accepted as a parsimonious model hull lehn tedlie 1991 as well as the best model to use in testing the proposed hypothetical model in this study 11 findings of the construct relationships agfi=0.88 nnfi=0.90 pnfi=0.60 cfi=0.93 and ifi=0.94 thus the theoretical model might be under-identified so that it could be improved by examining the modification indices a direct gamma path from push travel motivation to destination loyalty was identified although this relationship was not expected in this study according to this suggested modification a new path was added to see whether or not the revised model fits the observed data as presented in table 5 the revised model that estimated with three gamma paths and one beta path from four latent constructs showed a non-significance result of the chi-square test w2 37 43.85 p=0.20 the results of goodness of fit indices exhibited a similar pattern to those for the initial theoretical model as well as indicated better fits for all measures gfi=95 rmsr=0.03 agfi=0.91 nnfi=0.96 pnfi=0.61 cfi=0.97 and ifi=0.97 consequently the review of the squared multiple correlations of the revised structural model explained 12 of the variance in tourist satisfaction as well as showing a variance of 24 in destination loyalty having assessed the revised model sequential chisquare difference tests scdts were performed as post hoc tests to provide successive fit information anderson gerbing 1988 the results of three chisquare difference tests are shown in table 6 two chi-square tests performed to show a difference between the measurement and theoretical models as well as the theoretical and the revised model are significant at the 0.05 level the chi-square test of a difference the hypothesized structural causal model was tested by structural equation modeling sem which included a test of the overall model as well as individual tests of the relationships among the latent constructs as presented in fig 2 the results offered support for the relationship between satisfaction and destination loyalty at a significant level of 0.05 consequently tourist destination loyalty is positively affected by tourist satisfaction with their experiences as indicated by the completely standardized coefficient of 0.79 and a t-value of 6.48 interestingly satisfaction was found to be negatively influenced by the pull travel motivation completely standardized coefficient=­0.54 and t-value=­2.17 which was conversely proposed in order to test however another relationship that tourist satisfaction is affected by the push travel motivation was not supported by the data indicated by the completely standardized coefficient score of 0.41 and a t-value of 1.54 finally the new proposed path relationship from the push travel motivation to destination loyalty shows a significant result indicated by the completely standardized coefficient of 0.41 as well as a t-value of 0.425 thus travel push motivation has a positively direct relationship with destination loyalty 12 discussion and implications the empirical results of this study provide tenable evidence that the proposed structural equation model designed to consider push and pull motivations,

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article in press 54 .81 y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 push f3 push f5 push f7 .58 .43 .59 .65 push motivation .41 .41 .79 recom .79 destination loyalty .73 .38 .66 .58 travel satisfaction pull f3 .25 54 .87 .38 .73 .50 .72 .66 .71 revisiting .50 pull f7 .86 pull motivation expect/sati comparing pull f8 .46 worth .57 .48 fig 2 results of testing hypothetical model note push f3=relaxation push f5=family togetherness push f7=safety fun pull f3=small size and reliable weather pull f7=cleanness shopping pull f8=night life local cuisine chi-square 37 43.85 p>0.20 gfi=0.95 agfi=0.91 cfi=0.97 rmsea=0.03 and rmsr=0.03 Ã=t-value >x1.96x po0.05 satisfaction and destination loyalty simultaneously is acceptable even though in the literature the individual constructs and concepts have received considerable attention from tourism scholars and practitioners the conceptual model and empirical studies pertaining to causal relationships among those constructs have not been examined it is believed that this study has a substantial capability for generating more precise applications related to destination behavior especially concerning motivation satisfaction and destination loyalty the major findings of this study have significant managerial implications for northern cyprus first of all the exploratory factor analyses showed that tourists pursue eight different push motivations and have ten different pull motivations thus it is suggested that destination marketers consider the practical implications of these motivation variables because they can be fundamental factors in increasing satisfaction with destination services and products as well as enhancing destination loyalty second the confirmatory factor analyses revealed that even if each construct retains its original characteristics the push and pull constructs are largely reduced in the number of reliable and appropriate items that can be used to measure these constructs additionally it is hard to determine solid measurement indicators for its constructs even though these findings result from a single empirical investigation tourism scholars and practitioners should be aware that there is a need to have further studies to develop more effective measurement scales to assess such constructs this suggests that since tourists may be differently motivated and react differently consistent measurement scales and constructs should be explored and refined this study indicates that destination managers should give attention to tourists relaxation family togetherness and safety fun in order to appeal to tourists internal motives to travel the unique measurements and discriminant validity of satisfaction and destination loyalty have been confirmed thus it can be said that the two concepts are distinct and independent from each other it also can be suggested that an integrated and/or simultaneous approach for measuring tourist satisfaction is desirable with the items of expectation-disconfirmation worthwhile to visit and norm comparison finally this study supports the idea that the general theory of consumer loyalty can apply to tourist loyalty to tourism destinations thus destination managers can estimate tourists post purchase-behavior and consider this information in their decision-making the findings of testing of the proposed model have implications for the success of marketing destinations in order to improve satisfaction with travel experiences destination managers must consider the pull motivations which are related to external sources including destination attributes the appropriate destination attractions and activities should be allocated and delivered to tourists in order to enhance destination competitiveness also destination managers should consider the role of push motivations and their positive relationship to destination loyalty this indicates that tourists internal sources of motivation affect their destination loyalty which includes revisiting destinations and recommending them to others thus destination managers should focus more on tourists emotional feelings to increase destination loyalty finally it can be intuitively assumed that if tourists are satisfied with their travel experiences they are willing to revisit destinations and recommend them to other people this study provides empirical evidence supporting this statement in that there is a highly significant relationship between the two constructs in other words satisfaction is found to directly affect destination loyalty in a positive direction also satisfaction is determined to be a mediating construct between travel motivation and destination loyalty consequently destination managers

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article in press y yoon m uysal tourism management 26 2005 45­56 55 should establish a higher tourist satisfaction level to create positive post-purchase tourist behavior in order to improve and sustain destination competitiveness 13 concluding comments it can be concluded that tourism destination loyalty has causal relationships with motivation and satisfaction additionally the push motivation separately from the pull motivation determines the destination loyalty in the literature although it has been acknowledged that tourist destination loyalty is important little has been done to investigate its measurement or its structural relationships with motivation and satisfaction this study revealed and confirmed the existence of the critical relationship between push/pull motivations and destination loyalty this finding suggests that it would be worthwhile for destination managers to make greater investments in their tourism destination resources in order to continue to enhance experiences finally there are several issues associated with this study s limitations that should be discussed to provide a guide for future research the study s model was tested in a specific setting northern cyprus in the mediterranean region the generalization of the model is suggested with the replication of this study in other settings that have different destination attributes this can provide opportunities to evaluate the extent and direction of motivation as visitors relate degrees of satisfaction to destination loyalty an application of the model to other settings will help produce reliable indicators and further validate the constructs thus producing a more robust and stable model acknowledgements the authors thank nurdan yavuz for creating the database used in this study references ajzen i fishbein m 1977 attitude-behavior relations a theoretical analysis and review of empirical research psychological bulletin 84 888­918 anderson j gerbing d w 1988 structural equation modeling in 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