DOES DEMOGRAPHIC FACTOR AFFECT TOURIST BEHAVIOUR? FINDINGS FROM THE RELIGIOUS SITE OF JAGANNATH DHAM, INDIA

Abstract

According to a report by UNWTO 'Asia and the pacific region' is considered as the core of the world's religious tourism as half of the world's religious voyages take place in this region only. In this context the 'Great India temples' play a major role in attracting crores of pilgrims along with the tourists of varied interests. These tourists exhibit different types of behaviour during their travel. As the behaviour is largely dependent upon the tourists' nature (belief, trust, motivation), place of residence, state, age, education etc, hence analyzing the same will help the Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) for 'planning, development and marketing' of its products and services in a better way. The current research intends to find out the demographic profile of the tourists visiting Jagannath Dham, Puri (India) and analyse the 'socio-religious behaviour' of the tourists from their demographic characteristics to provide suggestive measures for the development of the destination. The responses from the tourists (404) were collected through a structured questionnaire via convenience sampling. Initially, the demographic profile was analysed through percentage analysis and later the behavioural analysis was carried out by testing the instrument's reliability through (α), and the sample's adequacy via KMO & Bartlett's test. Later the factors were reduced via PCA and analysed through Levene's test, ANOVA & Post-Hoc tests. From the analysis, it was observed that behavioural characteristics are significantly associated only with the 'state of the residence' and 'nature of residence' of the travelers. Whereas other demographic factors like age, education, gender, and marital status are not significantly affecting the tourist behaviour. The results revealed that people from 'all age groups' show a very little dependency on the temple staff but 'moderate to high interest' in local culture. While metropolitan tourists don't show much desire in partaking Mahaprashada (the religious food offering of the temple), the rural people are less 'adhering to rituals' in comparison to the metropolitan and semi-urban tourists. Apart from this, there were few other revelations based on which suggestions have been given which were if implemented will certainly result in attracting more number of tourist to the destination.

Keywords

• religious tourism
• jagannath dham
• tourist behaviour
• religious belief