Factors Influencing Tourists’ Intention to Visit Sam Chuk Community Market in the Digital Era

Abstract

The objectives of this research were: 1) to examine tourists’ levels of opinion toward digital factors related to visiting Sam Chuk Community Market; and 2) to study the digital factors influencing tourists’ intention to visit Sam Chuk Community Market in the digital era. The sample consisted of 384 tourists visiting the Sam Chuk Community Market in Suphan Buri Province, selected through accidental sampling. The research instrument utilized for data collection was a questionnaire. Data were analyzed using frequencies, percentages, means (M), standard deviations (SD), and multiple linear regression.

The research findings revealed that: 1) tourists’ opinions toward the factors influencing their intention to visit Sam Chuk Community Market, both overall and for each individual aspect, were at a high level. The aspect with the highest mean score was the perceived benefit of the digital market, followed by consumers’ experience in technology utilization and the market image from the consumers’ perspective, respectively. 2) The hypothesis testing demonstrated that the digital factors of market administrators and entrepreneurs yielded a multiple correlation coefficient (R) of .818 and a predictive power of 65.90%  (Adjusted R² = 0.659) with statistical significance. Specifically, two independent variables exerted a statistically significant positive influence on the intention to visit Sam Chuk Community Market at the .05 level, namely, digitally aligned cultural tourism experience (X6) and trust in the security of online trading in the market (X5), whereas the other factors showed no statistically significant influence on the dependent variable. The predictive equations in raw score and standardized score forms were formulated as follows: