Understanding Travellers’ Intention to Stay at Rural Homestay: A Comparative Study between Actual and Potential Homestay Guests

Abstract

The existence of homestays in rural areas has yet to receive substantial welcome from certain visitors, emphasis is placed on the values offered. This study explored the drivers (i.e., functional value, social value, emotional value, trust, and cleanliness) for rural homestay accommodations and their impacts on intentions to stay through voluntary responses gathered from actual and potential homestay guests. 292 valid responses were used to discover homestay guests’ intentions to stay at rural homestay. A partial least squares-structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis were employed for preliminary and comparative analyses. Last but not least, the constructs that were assessed were visually presented in the path models. The results determine five established clusters of research, commonly applying the theory of planned behaviour. Interestingly, this study discovered that cleanliness was perceived as a determinant on intention to stay at rural homestays for both actual and potential homestay guests. Some of the determinants were perceived differently according to group of guests. Despite numerous studies have been conducted in Malaysia to identify the different elements influencing the intention of Malaysian individuals to stay at rural homestay, however, there is no known study has been conducted by looking into the list of proposed independent variables namely functional value, social value, emotional value, trust, and cleanliness in a single framework. This study is considerably one of the first to employ a technique of multi-group analysis, where the insights from two different types of travellers; that is actual and potential guests of rural homestays in Sarawak.