Investigating air travellers' travel motivation during a pandemic crisis

The growth of the air transport industry has been accompanied by various crises including aircraft incidents and accidents, terrorist attacks, and pandemics such as COVID-19. These crises to a great extent affect air travelers' motivation, which in turn affects the air travel demand that justifies airlines' legitimate existence and sustainability. However, there has been relatively little research into understanding air travelers' motivation during and after such crises, despite some studies having been conducted in the tourism domain to understand the motivation of tourists to travel to specific destinations. An enhanced knowledge in this field is important and would benefit the airline industry, which is facing increasing competition from other transportation modes as well online conferencing technologies. By applying the Push and Pull Factor model, this study has sought to identify the travel motivation and further determine whether Push factors have any positive influence on Pull factors. To this end, 760 questionnaires were collected from Taiwan. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses. Our findings reveal that the Destination image remains the most influential Pull factor, while Aviation-specific products and services is the least attractive Pull factor. Self-realization/achievement topped the rankings for the Push factors, while Flying experience was a selling point in its own right among the Push factors, although it was not as appealing as anticipated. The millennium generation, fewer frequent flyers and low-income consumers are more likely to take advantage of flying deals. This paper suggests that a more collaborative approach between airlines, airports and destination organizations could be adopted to design and promote tailor-made aviation and travel products to stimulate segmented consumers' demand for air travel during crises. Effective marketing strategies need to be in place to promote the specially-designed travel products.