A Study on the Factors Affecting Thai Tourist’s Visit Intention to Travel to Bangladesh
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Abstract
Bangladesh is only a two-hour flight from Thailand. Every year, lots of Bangladeshi people visit Thailand; on the contrary, very few Thai people travel to Bangladesh. So, this study intended to study Thai tourists' intentions to travel to Bangladesh and the effect of the factors (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and destination image) on their intentions to travel to Bangladesh. It also aimed to study the indirect effect of destination image on intention through attitudes toward visiting Bangladesh. “Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)” was the basis of the theoretical framework. The conceptual model was adopted from the TPB model, which incorporates destination images. The focus group of this study was Thai University students who had never visited Bangladesh but were aware of Bangladesh. Data was collected through a structured, closed-ended survey questionnaire that was distributed online and offline. A sample of 411 Thai tourists (Thai University students) was drawn by the convenience sampling method. SPSS 23 statistics and structural equation modeling through SPSS AMOS 26 were applied to analyze the data. This study found a significant direct relationship between Thai tourists’ attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control with their travel intention and a significant indirect relationship between destination image and intention. Furthermore, this study indicated that 71% of the variance of Thai tourists’ visit intention to travel to Bangladesh was explained by the extended TPB model, and almost 51% of the variance of Thai tourists’ attitude was explained by the destination image of Bangladesh. Theoretical and managerial implications were derived.
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