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The purposes of this study were to develop a measurement scale for motivation to cruising and to examine the role of cruising motivation on intention to cruise. The motivation measurement scale was developed by following the procedures recommended by Churchill (1979). The scale was tested and found to be both reliable and valid. The role of cruising motivation on intention to cruise was tested with an online panel survey and it was found that cruising motivation has a positive influence on cruising intention. Based on the study results, some marketing implications were provided to the cruise industry.

Motivation is a fundamental force behind all human behavior (Berkman & Gilson, 1978). It refers to the “internal psychological factors (needs and wants) that generate a state of tension or disequilibrium within individuals” (Crompton & McKay, 1997, p. 427). Although travel motivation has been extensively studied in tourism literature, the discussion of motivation has not been expanded to cruise tourism except for Qu and Ping’s (1999) study on the motivations associated with cruising in Hong Kong. However, this study adopted a motivation scale from elsewhere without examining the reliability and validity of the scale. Since understanding the underlying motives to cruising is likely to enhance our understanding of why people cruise and what they are looking for from their trips, the first purpose of the current study was to understand people’s motivation to cruising by developing a cruising motivation measurement scale. Although travel motivation has been identified as a critical factor in explaining tourist behavior (Crompton, 1979), few studies tested the relationship between travel motivation and travel intention. Intention is defined as the direction of mind or “intended mode of behavior” (Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 1405). Most motivation studies have been characterized by identifying travel motivations in different tourism contexts such as garden (Connell, 2004), rural tourism (Frochot, 2005), and national parks (Kim, Lee, & Klenosky, 2003) without examining its influence on travel intentions. Although Kim and Chalip (2004) investigated the role of travel motives on visiting intentions and found both direct and indirect effects of travel motivations on desire to attend the World Cup in Korea, their motivation measurement was adopted from a leisure motivation scale and only three dimensions of the scale were included in their study: escape, learning, and social motives. Therefore, this study was conducted to first develop a measurement scale for cruising motivation and then to investigate the influence of motivation to cruising on people’s intention to take a cruise vacation.

Although the study is considered to be a timely contribution to travel motivation as well as the cruising literature, it is nonetheless subject to some limitations. First, the study only examined travel motivations associated with North American cruising. Thus, the results should not be generalized to cruising in other contexts. Second, an online panel survey was conducted to collect data in the current study. Since online panels are typically characterized by those who have registered with online panel companies or those who have internet access and computer skills, it does not necessarily represent the whole U.S. population. In addition, interviews were conducted with cruisers at the preliminary stage of the study. Since only two cruise companies (i.e., Holland America Line and Princess Cruises) granted the researcher permission to interview their passengers, passengers of other cruise lines were unable to be reached and thus, were excluded from the study sample. Therefore, generalizing the current results to other cruise lines should be done with caution. Nevertheless, the study has developed a valid and reliable measurement scale for motivation to cruising. Further testing of the scale with other samples such as cruisers in the Asia Pacific region, or Mediterranean would be useful to refining the measurement scale and increasing the scale’s generalizability. Also, the positive relationship between motivation and cruising intentions identified in the current study further consolidate the important role of motivation in travel research and reveal specific underlying reasons why people choose to cruise.