Abstract:
This studys objectives are to 1) study the present context of tourism in Mae Sot special economic zone, Tak province 2) the elements of shopping tourism for developing Mae Sot special economic zone, Tak province 3) examine the concordance of shopping tourism in developing Mae Sot special economic zone with the empirical data, and 4) propose the tourism form of shopping tourism in developing
Mae Sot special economic zone, Tak province. This research is a fundamental study which is designed as mixed-method. The studys data collection employed qualitative procedure by interviewing specialists, stakeholders, entrepreneurs, and government officials. The data analysis of this study focused on tourists behavior factors and elements of potential of tourist attractions. Whereas, the participants in the
quantitative study were the tourists who answered the questionnaires and weighed mean evaluation forms. The data was analyzed to present scales of comments on questionnaire items and the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).The results of the study found that
1) evaluation rate of tourism elements of shopping tourism spots in Mae Sot special economic zone, Tak province was in Good level with the score of 66.98.
2) Elements of shopping tourism for developing Mae Sot special economic zone, Tak province were 3 main topics; potential element of tourism , element of tourists behavior and souvenirs product feature towards shopping tourism. KMO assessment was at 0.84 which showed that variables have correlation.
3) The first order in Confirmatory Factor Analysis of three factors with 15 variables, the standard weight of each indicator was between 0.05 0.85. Whereas, The results of secondary order confirmatory factor analyses revealed that both factors were equally important with factor loading of 1.00, and CFA of tourism model of shopping tourism in Mae Sot special economic zone found that there was not concordance with empirical evidence, shown as χ2 = 2.41 GFI = 0.96 AGFI = 0.91 CFI = 0.96 RMSEA = 0.06, and pvalue = 0.00.
4) Suitable form of shopping tourism in developing Mae Sot special economic zone should be considered on the context of tourism in order to fulfill the present situation of tourism.