Abstract:
This paper aims to (1) study the travelling behavior of Generation Y tourists for local food gastronomy tourism in Chiang Rai and (2) to study motivation factor of Generation Y tourists for local food gastronomy tourism in Chiang Rai. This study surveys using questionnaires to collect the data from Thai tourists (Generation Y: aged 1837 years old, B.E. 25232543). The sample size in this study is 400 respondents. The descriptive statistics applied in this research are percentage, frequency, means, and standard deviation as well as inferential statistics which are TTest and OneWay ANOVA.
The result shows that most of the respondents are female aged 2429 years old, with a Bachelors degree or higher. The majority occupation is private employees making money around 10,00120,000 Baht and used to travel in Chiang Rai at least once by themselves. Travel expenses are approximately less than 500 Baht/ meal. The most favorite tourist attraction is Choui Fong Tea Plantation followed by Singha Park. They normally used to eat Nam Ngiao, Spicy minced, Northem style chilli dip, Sai Aua. Most of the tourists receive traveling information via internet. From statistical analysis, it is found that the influencing push factors are (1) the need for recreation, (2) building a good relationship with family members, friends, and relatives, and (3) the needs to travel in favorite tourist attraction respectively. On the other hand, regarding pull factors, the influencing factors are (1) the beauty of tourist attraction, (2) the weather at of tourist attraction, and (3) the diversity of tourist attraction respectively.
The result also shows that the respondents with different age, gender, education level, occupation, and income will have different opinion towards push factors; (1) the needs to travel in wellknown places, (2) the current trend of travelling, (3) the relative high price of foods in daily life compare to quality of foods, and (4) the avoidance of repetitive style of food sin daily life. For pull factor, it is found that they have different opinion towards the following factors; (1) the diversity of tourist attraction, (2) the accommodation of tourist attraction, (3) the completeness of sharing information via online, (4) the hygiene of tourist attraction, and (5) the effectiveness of providing financial service in the tourist attraction at the 0.05 level of significance.