Push and Pull Factors Motivating Backpacker Tourists to Travel to the City of Bandung
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Abstract
Bandung City is one of Indonesia's leading urban tourism destinations and continues to attract a growing number of domestic tourists, including an increasing segment of backpacker tourists whose travel motivations differ from those of conventional, package-based tourists. This study aims to describe the internal (push) and external (pull) factors that motivate backpacker tourists to visit Bandung City and to compare descriptively which group of factors obtains a higher average score in this sample. A cross-sectional descriptive quantitative design was used, with data collected through a closed-ended questionnaire distributed to 114 backpacker tourists selected through purposive sampling and analyzed using a scoring technique with continuum-line categorization. Push factors, calculated as the unweighted mean of eight dimension-level percentages, fell into the high-to-very-high category with a mean score of 84%; Self Evaluation was the highest-scoring dimension (88%), followed by Escape (87%) and Regression (86%). Pull factors obtained a marginally higher unweighted mean of 86% across nine dimensions, with Environment scoring highest (89%), followed by Safety and Atmosphere (87% each), while Cleanliness recorded the lowest score among all eighteen dimensions (79%). A paired-samples t-test on respondent-level composite scores confirmed that this difference is statistically significant, t(113) = 3.38, p = .001, though the effect size is small (Cohen's d = 0.32), indicating that pull factors scored marginally but consistently higher than push factors within respondents rather than substantially outweighing them. Both push and pull factors nonetheless play a complementary role in shaping backpacker travel motivation, with implications for how destination managers in Bandung City might prioritize environmental comfort, public safety, and cleanliness for this segment.
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