Drive Tourism by Prideaux Bruce;Carson Dean;

Author:Prideaux, Bruce;Carson, Dean;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Economics, Finance, Business & Industry
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2010-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Methods

The methods for this research were qualitative and were conducted in two phases. Qualitative methods were chosen because this form of research lends itself to an exploratory approach when participants’ in-depth insights are being sought. Specifically, the goal of the first phase was to develop a valid reflection of participants’ motivations for RVing and to explore whether differences occur between caravanners and independent travellers. Focus groups were used for this phase because they could capture broad insights into who the two groups of RVers were and what motivated them. The emergent themes from these focus groups were then explored in further detail in the second phase. This phase used in-depth interviews because they allowed rich descriptions to be developed of the two RVing groups in question and would generate findings that could be generalised (Krueger 1998). This iterative approach meant that the findings could be seen as broadly indicative of RVers in the study region, although it was limited in that the findings could not provide a representative or numerical indicator of the size of the groups.

For the first phase, two focus groups were conducted during the summer of 2007 at the Dawson Creek Visitor Centre. Dawson Creek is a small community in Northern British Columbia, Canada. Its location at the Zero Mile Marker of the Alaska Highway makes it a popular destination, or at least stop-over, for North American RVers on their way to or from Alaska. The four groups were comprised of twelve independent RVers and twelve ‘caravanners’ – RVers who travelled as part of an organised group. The groups included an almost equal number of males and females. Most of the participants were from the US and were older. Participants were offered a US $20 incentive for their time, as well as an information package on Dawson Creek and the surrounding area. Food and drinks were also provided. The focus groups were recorded on video and on an audio recorder, and were facilitated by a professional facilitator. Following the focus groups, the discussions were transcribed and analysed thematically.

As this research was largely exploratory in nature, the focus groups played an integral role in guiding the development of questions for the second phase, which consisted of in-depth interviews. These sought to explore the differences between caravanners and independent RV travellers in further detail, and to develop generalised findings. The interviews were purposive in nature, so that any heterogeneity in the two groups (caravanners and independent travellers) was explored. The questions were designed to be open-ended questions and included several elicitation questions (Zaltman 2003), whereby respondents were required to complete sentences in their own words, thus encouraging them to feel in control of the interview and to express their own feelings more freely. Questions in the in-depth interviews focused on issues such as RV traveller motivations, decisionmaking processes and their perception of caravan travel versus independent travel.

The in-depth interviews were conducted between early June 2007 and late July 2007 at three private RV parks and the Walmart car park in Dawson Creek.

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