| The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of mature tourism via the aging theoretical framework of Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC). Older adults who attended Lifelong Learning classes at Clemson University and Furman University, South Carolina in the spring of 2004 were chosen to participate in this study. Five general categories of independent variables were studied to determine their potential influence on mature respondents' travel intention: socio-demographics (i.e., age, gender, length of residence at current home, length of residence in the Upstate of South Carolina, marital status, race, education, employment status, and annual household income), travel psychographics (i.e., travel motivation and constraint factors), quality of life (i.e., global life satisfaction and self-perceived health), and travel behavior variables (i.e., past travel experience, number of leisure trips taken last year, number of days away from home on leisure trips, satisfaction with last leisure trip, satisfaction with leisure trips in general, travel information sources, travel planners, trip companions, and destination attributes), and the SOC processes (i.e., elective selection, loss-based selection, optimization, and compensation). These five categories of variables were found interrelated. This study also identified important predictors of mature respondents' intention to travel within one year and five years, as well as parameters that influence the SOC processes. The results of this study profiled socio-demographic, psychographic, and travel behavior characteristics of mature travelers. |
