Chinese pet owners traveling with pets: Motivation-based segmentation

A growing number of people share their lives with pets, including during tourism and leisure activities; however, limited academic attention has been paid to developing a valid and reliable scale to measure pet owners' motivations for traveling with their pets or to segment the pet owner market by said motivations. In this study, we used data from 24 interviews and a survey of 752 Chinese pet owners whose pets accompanied them during tourism activities within the past 3 years to devise a scale assessing pet owners’ motivations for traveling with their pets. The scale includes six motivation dimensions: perceived benefits for pets, pet attachment, socialization, prestige, compensation and reciprocation, and novelty. Subsequent cluster analysis revealed three pet owner clusters (human–pet relationship-oriented, pet owner–oriented, and pet benefits–oriented) that differed significantly in terms of sociodemographics. Implications and limitations are also discussed.