Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the recreational tourism preferences of university students within the framework of their push and pull travel motivations. In addition, it was aimed to highlight how some variables and motivations affect tourism preferences in mutual interaction. Validity and reliability were obtained by “Scale of Recreational Activities in Destination Choices” (SRADC), “Scale of Intrinsic Travel Motivations” (SITM) and “Scale of Extrinsic Travel Motivations” (SETM) conducted by Özdemir, Karaküçük, and Büyüköztürk (2013). Descriptive statistics, independent sample t test, one way ANOVA and Univariate test were used for data analysis, for in-group comparisons Tukey (HSD-LSD) and Pearson Correlation test were used. In this study, it was determined that .85 for recreational activities in destination choices scale, .90 for SITM and .91 for SETM. While the push and pull travel motivation of the participants was above the mean values (123.96 ± 15.65; 121.35 ± 16.81), the highest subscale score in push travel motivation was obtained by the Exploring-Knowledge subdimension (39.01 ± 5.74). The highest sub-dimension score was obtained from the Escape sub-dimension (38.31 ± 5.98). In the pull travel motivation sub-dimensions, the highest sub-dimension score was the quality-atmosphere sub-dimension (39.29 ± 5.24), while the lowest sub-dimension score was obtained by the Natural Environment sub-dimension (19.98 ± 4.58). The findings of the study showed that the importance given to recreational activities was influenced by variables such as gender, year of study and perceived welfare, but also revealed differences in gender, field of study, year of study, and perceived welfare in push and pull travel motivations. In addition, there is a moderate positive relationship between recreational choices, push travel motivation and pull travel motivation. As a result, it has been determined that university students have high push and pull travel motivation and recreation preferences are differentiated between SITM and SETM by certain variables.

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