Determinants of tourists' intention to purchase handicrafts

• Main Author: Spencer Hedley Mogindol
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: HD2340.8-2346.5 Small and medium-sized businesses, artisans, handicrafts, trades
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/37787/1/24%20PAGES.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/37787/2/FULLTEXT.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/37787/

There were many research studies on tourism souvenir but research on tourists' intention to purchase local handicraft is limited. This is particularly evident in developing countries, such as Malaysia. The study proposed and tested an extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model to examine the determinants of tourists' intentions to purchase local handicraft. The study collected 344 usable responses from domestic and foreign tourists in Sabah. Data analyses were conducted in two phases. In the first phase, preliminary analysis including descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), correlation analysis, t-test and reliability tests were undertaken. The second phase concentrated on model and hypotheses testing via structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS 20.0. After refining the proposed model, the results from maximum likelihood estimation procedures using AMOS indicated that all the three main determinants (attitude, subjective norm and perceive behavioural control) in the TPB were statistically significant in predicting tourists' intention to purchase local handicraft, indicating that TPB can be used to predict tourists buying intention for local handicraft. Past travel experience with local handicraft purchases was also significant in predicting tourists' intention to purchase local handicraft but shopping experiences only has minor influence on tourists' behavioural intention to purchase local handicraft. The independent-samples t-test was used to explore behavioural beliefs differences between local and foreign tourists about purchasing local handicraft and out of the 24 attributes being measured, only 11 attributes produced significant results. Further testing at their effect size using eta squared, proved to be of little use when the effect size of almost all the attributes was small. Only one attribute (makes a good gift) has a moderate effect size. Based on the independent-samples t-test results and the effect size test, it can be concluded that there is little differences between local and foreign tourists' behavioural beliefs about purchasing local handicraft. This study is significant because it has identified a new model to predict tourists' intention to purchase local handicraft and its contribution to research methodology via the use of CFA. Outdated data is one of the obstacles of this research.