ABSTRACT
Over the last decade, the Chinese outbound tourism market has experienced rapid development, and understanding the tourism motivations of this growth market is critical to understanding their decision-making processes and tourism behaviors. By reviewing the literature on tourism motivations and analyzing the limitations in this research area, this theoretical article develops a conceptual model based on means–end chain (MEC) theory to study the tourism motivations of Chinese outbound tourists and discusses the associated laddering technique required by the MEC theory. It is argued that exploring tourism motivation with the MEC theory will make both theoretical and methodological contributions to tourism motivation research, as well as provide more meaningful information for understanding Chinese outbound tourists.
