Seeking tourism in a social context: an examination of Chinese rural migrant workers’ travel motivations and constraints

ABSTRACTThis study examines travel motivations and constraints of rural migrant workers in China as a socially disadvantaged group. Through 20 in-depth interviews, the study identified 21 motivations in three categories: personal seeking, interpersonal seeking and personal escaping. Nine travel constraint factors were also identified. The identified motivations and constraints were interpreted through the Escaping-Seeking tourism motivation framework and the Hierarchical Constraint Model. The study concludes that personal seeking motivations predominate rural migrant workers' travel motivations, whereas structural constraints are more influential than intrapersonal and interpersonal constraints. Social context was found to be a significant confounding factor in determining travel motivations and constraints of this social group. This study contributes to the theories of travel motivations and constraints.KEYWORDS: Rural migrant workertourist motivationconstraintseeking-escapinghierarchical constraint modelChina AcknowledgementsThis work was supported by National Social Science Post-fund of China (22FGLB103).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the National Social Science Post-fund of China [22FGLB103].Notes on contributorsGuanghui QiaoDr Guanghui Qiao is an associate professor in School of Tourism and Urban-Rural Planning of Zhejiang Gongshang University, China. His research areas include social tourism, tourism and well-being, tourist behaviour and tourism marketing. Guanghui has published widely on accessible tourism and social tourism in major tourism and hospitality journals including Annals of Tourism Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, and International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.Songshan (Sam) HuangDr Songshan (Sam) Huang is a research professor in Tourism and Services Marketing in the School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University. His research interests include tourist behavior, destination marketing, tour guiding and various China tourism and hospitality issues. He has published widely on Chinese tourist behaviour and China tourism and hospitality issues in major tourism and hospitality journals including Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, and Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research.Oscar Vorobjovas-PintaDr Oscar Vorobjovas-Pinta is a leading expert on LGBTQI+ communities in the context of leisure, hospitality and tourism. His research interests are the sociology of tourism, tourist behaviour, and LGBTIQ+ tourism. He has a broad interest and industry experience in innovative tourism research, and has been involved in a number of projects focusing on resilience, and on technology-enabled advanced tracking of visitors to Tasmania and Sydney, New South Wales. These projects have each been built on extensive stakeholder and industry engagement.