Tourist Segments for New Facilities in National Park Areas: Profiling Tourists in Norway Based on Psychographics and Demographics

Abstract

The pursuit of sustainable tourism may involve development of more facilities in the buffer zones of national parks and other pristine nature areas. Two independent samples of domestic and foreign tourists in Norway were segmented based on expressed preferences for a diversity of new facilities in an alpine national park region, all facilities potentially with different impacts on the natural habitat. One sample was recruited inside the alpine area, the other outside. Post hoc market segmentation was carried out using a combined two-stage hierarchical and nonhierarchical clustering of facility quest factors identified from a set of survey items. We assessed stability of the clusters by comparing independent sample solutions against the pooled sample and further assessing the extent to which the clusters differed with respect to demographic or psychographic characteristics.