When tourism becomes a launch event: Developing a motivation scale for space-launch tourism

초록

Space-launch tourism combines temporal scarcity, sensory intensity, collective spectatorship, and technological symbolism, limiting the direct transferability of established tourism-motivation measures. Using a sequential multi-study design (N = 774), this study develops and validates a context-specific motivation scale. Study 1 used 22 interviews to define the construct domain; Study 2 purified the measure across two samples (n = 186 and 142); and Study 3 assessed its measurement and nomological properties in two independently recruited cohorts (n = 424). Results support seven dimensions and theoretically interpretable associations with attitude and behavioural intention. QI, comprising prior in-person launch viewers, provides primary validation evidence, whereas QII, comprising respondents without prior launch-tourism participation, provides supplementary exploratory evidence. Because measurement invariance and formal group differences were not tested, cross-cohort patterns are interpreted descriptively and not attributed to prior experience. The scale captures the sensory, social, educational, self-related, and symbolic meanings of technology-driven event tourism.

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