Research Proposal

The Role of Nationality and Age in Backpackers Behaviors Motivations and

By Kunal Bhasin (2121119) Bachelors in Hospitality Management (Year 2)

Introduction
As an international student studying tourism, it is quite fascination for me to come across backpackers from different nationalities and hear about their reason to travel and their patterns of travelling around the world. This interest led me to find out a thesis by Jane Godfrey (2011). That thesis The Grass is Greener on the Other Side: What Backpackers to leave home and why they choose New Zealand as a destination. Talked about what really motivates this category of tourists, i.e., Backpackers to travel away from their home and their reasons to choose New Zealand as one of their destinations. That particular publication and several many researches talked about motivations and behaviors of backpackers but none of them really looked at the factors that affect those motivations. Thus, I believe my research can be a follow up to all the researches and specially the one by Jane Godfrey because Jane Godfrey leaves an open slot for a research that must be done that looks at the factors affecting the motivations so that a deeper insight can be provided for the backpa ckers studies.

Literature Review
Pearce (1990, cited by Godfrey, 2011) stated that backpackers are young, travelling on a budget and staying for a longer rather than a brief holiday. Godfrey (2011) described that backpackers are not a homogenous group. They vary in different aspects including age, nationality, travel experiences, mode of travel, length of travel and motivations for travel. Although there are so many areas to be researched in the subject of backpackers, Markward (2008) added that the majority of backpackers research has focused only on the traditional market segment of student and youth travellers. According to Hyde (1999) backpackers and independent travellers both can be categorized in one section and looking at both the segments vacation planning, decision making and behavior can give us an idea of what they expect from the country they travel to and why they choose to travel to that destination. This literature review will look at what methods, different researchers used, what their findings were and how my research can fill the gap in the previous researches.

Many researchers (e.g. Hetch & Martin, 2006; Toxward, 1999; Godfrey, 2011; Reichel et al., 2008) in this topic have a common theme of finding out the characteristics, motivations, and decision making of backpackers, having a direct contribution in the backpackers segment. There have been a few studies that have an indirect contribution to this topic. Lepp & Gibson (2007) looked at the sensation seekers, their role and destination choice; Prayag & Ryan (2010) looked at the relation between the push and pull factors of a tourist destination. Due to a wide range of studies done by different researchers, the findings are in some ways similar and differing form each other at the same time.

Hetch & Martin (2006) and Godfrey (2011) both support the findings that backpackers cannot be treated as a homogenous group and there are differences like gender, age, and country of origin. Godfrey (2011) added that there were further differences like mode of travel, length of travel and motivations to travel. Valentin (2009) found out that backpackers have a general lack of interest and apathy towards politics and they do not consider the destinations political situations to decide to go to that destination. Hyde (1999) went in a different sub topic and found out that there are two types of backpackers, low search backpackers who undertake little pre-vacation information search and planning and the high search backpacker group who normally go through more preparation and research. None of the studies tried to find out the role of age in decision making of a destination but Valentine (2009) did look at the role of political awareness and Prayag and Ryan (2010) looked at the role of nationality in a more theoretical way and it wasnt aimed just at backpackers rather at the all the types of tourists. Prayag and Ryan (2010) found out that nationality has a strong influence on the specific motives of tourists. Since it is evident that there is zero to less research done to find out the role of age and nationality in the decision making of a destination, the motivations to travel, and the behavior of travel, my research will be filler for the gap.

The method of research I will be undertaking is similar to most of the researches in this subject, i.e., a qualitative research method. Majority of studies undertook qualitative research methods although two out of ten studies (e.g., Lepp and Gibson, 2007; Reichel et al., 2008) used the quantitative method and Toxward (1999) used both methods together. This difference was because in researches where an information rich data is needed to find out answers, quantitative methods do not help as much. They can be used to support qualitative findings, but for solid answers quantitative methods alone is not preferred. Most researches used interviews as their research instrument and a few used surveys.

Methods
Participants

The target population of interest is a group of about 15- 20 backpackers who will be aged between 18- 35 years old and would be of different nationalities. The target population will not be consisting of any domestic tourists since he research looks at the international market. I will recruit the participants from the Basement Backpackers in Wellington. The gender is not a variable in the research so it will not be given much relevance in the recruitment process.

Design and Instruments

The research will be a qualitative study that will be conducted with the help interviews. The interviews will have a set of in-depth, open-ended questions that will be used to collect the information from the participants. The questions will be designed in a way that it makes the participants talk about their background and then how they plan to leave etc.

In-depth interviewing, also known as unstructured interviewing, is a type of interview which researchers use to elicit information in order to achieve a holistic understanding of the interviewees point of view or situation; it can also be used to explore interesting areas for further investigation. This type of interview involves asking informants open-ended questions, and probing wherever necessary to obtain data deemed useful by the researcher. (Berry, 1999)

The interview will take place at the Basement Backpackers itself so that the participants feel comfortable. All the interviews will be digitally recorded on a video camera with participants either talking to the camera or in the presence of the camera, this will be an option given to the participant. The videos will be then transcribed so that they can be broken down and analyzed with research tools.

Procedure

I will start my research process by taking permissions from the Basement Backpackers owner to conduct interviews in their premises and to use their guests for the research. Then I will start my recruitment process by talking to people and walking around the Backpackers common areas and bars. While walking around, I will explain them a bit about my research and tell them about myself. Once I get a group of 15- 20 people between the are range of 18- 35 year and of different nationalities I will take them to a holding room where I will give them a 15 minutes description about my research and who I am so people are comfortable talking to me and sharing things with me. While doing this I will distribute consent forms for them to read carefully and think about it before going through the interviews. The next day I will go back and take individual interviews in a single room so that the participants can open up and have all the privacy they need. The interviews are expected to take about 45- 60 minutes so all the interviews will finish in two days time. Before interviewing, I will give the participants pseudonyms to keep their identity unknown.

Once all the interviews are done, the videos will be transcribed. Since I will be doing the work all by myself and with a bit of help from my tutor I anticipate that it will take a week to properly transcribe the information and then another week to analyze the data and put it in an understandable and presentable format.

Data Analysis
As the research is a qualitative research, I will be using the content or theme analysis method to analyze the data collected by the interviews.

Content analysis is a research method used to analyze social life by interpreting words and images from documents, film, art, music, and other cultural products and media. It has been used extensively to examine the place of women in society. In advertising, for example, women tend to be portrayed as subordinate, often through their lower physical positioning in relation to the males or the unassertive nature of their poses or gestures. (Content Analysis, 2013)

Ethics
The research involves other individuals and collection of their personal information, hence it is necessary to keep in mind all the ethical issues that apply to this research process. I will be taking the following considerations to take care of the ethical issues that might affect this research:

Providing Consent forms and Research Information

Before going through with the research, I will distribute consent forms amongst the participants and get them to sign it. I will also provide as much information about the research and myself, as I can. The participants will be given a day to think about it.

Anonymity

The participant names will not be recorded, rather they will be given a pseudonym, and their videos will not be revealed. The videos will only be used to keep a record of the interviews and transcribe them afterwards.

Promise of Confidentiality

The information collected will not be revealed to anyone since I am the only one working on the research. It will be only I who will be exposed to that information.

Dissemination
The data and the analysis will be presented in a form of a graphical and oral presentation to the tourism department at the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment so that the tourism department can benefit from the findings and use them to develop new tourism strategies.

Conclusion
After looking at the literature review, it can be seen that there is space and need for more research in this subject and my research is minor but important filler. According to the previous researches it is hard to get, the whole topic covered in one research but one can break up the topic in small pieces of work and start looking at each, one at a time.

My research will be benefitting the New Zealand tourism committees by informing them what the backpackers expect when they come to New Zealand. The development committee can form strategies according to the findings so that they can satisfy the backpackers to the fullest.

The research is going to be a qualitative research and will be undertaking interviewing as an instrument to collect information. It is anticipated that it would take three weeks to put it all together. The research that I am proposing is a low budget yet high information yielding research and it will benefit the tourism development committee.

Reference List
Berry, R. S. (1999, September). In-Depth Reviewing. Retrieved from Education Line: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000001172.htm

Content Analysis. (2013). Retrieved from About.com: http://sociology.about.com/od/C_Index/g/Content-Analysis.htm

Godfrey, J. L. (2001, April). The Motivations of Backpackers in New Zealand . From http://www.med.govt.nz/sectors-industries/tourism/pdf-docs-library/tourismresearch-and-data/other-research-and-reports/research-projects-andreports/tourism-research-scholarship-reports/godfrey-motivation-ofbackpackers-in-nz.pdf

Hecht, J.-A., & Martin, D. (2006). Backpacking and hostel-picking: an analysis from Canada. From http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1541748

Hyde, K. F. (1999). A hedonic perspective on independent vacation planning, decisionmaking and behaviour. . From http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19991811763.html;jsessionid=8F22720E7 B50519F5E671A18AC895CDD?gitCommit=4.13.29

Lepp, A., & Gibson, H. (2007). Sensation seeking and tourism: Tourist role, perception of risk and destination choice. From http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517707001835

Markward, A. (2008). Backpackers: the next generation? From http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/435

Prayag, G., & Ryan, C. (2010, April 6). The relationship between the push and pull factors of a tourist destination: the role of nationality an analytical qualitative research approach. From http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13683501003623802

Reichel, A., Fuchs, G., & Uriely, N. (2008). ISRAELI BACKPACKERS: The Role of Destination Choice. From http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738308001199

Toxward, S. J. (1999). Backpackers' expectations and satisfactions a case study of Northland, New Zealand. From http://researcharchive.lincoln.ac.nz/dspace/handle/10182/1600

Uriely, N., Yonay, Y., & Simchai, D. (2002, April). Backpacking experiences: A Type and Form Analysis. From http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738301000755

Valentin, A. (2009). Role of political awareness in backpacker destination decisionmaking : a case study of the Burma travel boycott. From http://otago.ourarchive.ac.nz/handle/10523/3524