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NO ABSTRAK : 58
Relationship Among Religious Affiliation, Attitude and Willingness to Pay Sacred
Places Visit Tour
Putu Saroyini Piartrini.
University Udayana, Denpasar, Bali.
[email protected]
ABSTRACT :
Sacred place visit tours have been increasing popular. In ancient era it is known as pilgrimage. It
is also claimed as domain of spiritual tourism activity which received growing attention recently
from both academician and practitioners . It is interesting to explore the relationship among
religious affiliation, attitude and its value which is measured by its willingness to pay for a
package of sacred place visit tour. Based on Terror Management Theory perspective, mortality
salience condition empirically influenced consumption behaviors. The study was extended the
context to sacred places package tour product as one destination marketing development.
Research Hypotheses tested by data accumulated from experiment involving undergraduate
students in International Business Management n Denpasar, Bali. Experiment involved two
independent sample groups of individual who has different faith. Research Location First
hypothesis was if attitudes and willingness to pay individuals whose belief explicitly ordered
to visit some sacred places different from attitude and willingness to pay of those whose belief
doesn’t explicitly order to do so. Another hypothesis was if mortality salience condition
moderated the relationship between religious affiliation and attitude as well as willingness to
pay. Based on empirical findings from Terror Management Theory, worldview is one of death
anxiety buffer. Religion is one of fundamental sources of worldview which guides individual
behaviors. To attenuate death anxiety, individual tends to comply with cultural worldview which
provided norms and standard of behaviors. Compare to those whose belief doesn’t explicitly
ordered to visit some place once in a lifetime, attitude toward sacred places package tour of
individuals whose belief explicitly ordered to visit some place once a lifetime, would be more
positive both in high mortality salience condition and in low mortality salience condition. The
moderating effect of Mortality salience on willingness to pay predicted that compare to those
whose belief doesn’t explicitly ordered to visit some place once in a lifetime, willingness to pay
for sacred places package tour of individuals whose belief explicitly ordered to visit some place
once a lifetime, would be higher in high mortality salience condition than in low mortality
salience condition because of the higher perceived value of the product. The research findings
would be fruitful to support tourism practitioners in improving their market segmentation,
targeting and pricing of sacred place package tours. In addition to its positive contributions to
marketing management particularly in tourism research area, limitations of the study and
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further development also presented to stimulate scientific dialogue among those who are
interested in the research object as well as its topic.
KEYWORDS: religious affiliation, mortality salience, attitude, willingness to pay.
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Introduction.
Dating back of sacred places visit is pilgrimage, a journey searching moral or spiritual
significance. Typically, it is a journey to visit a place or city which is important to a person
belief and faith. Religions attach spiritual importance to particular places such as the place of
birth or death of founders or saint, to the place of their connection with the divine, to locations
where miracles were performed or witnessed, to locations where a deity is said to live , to any
site that is seen to have special spiritual powers.
I Made Arsana Dwiputra one of The CRCS Student batch 2011 told that sacred places
visit was not just a matter of visiting a place as a tourist . One of individual named Gede Sara
Sastra said that even the Tirta Yatra India Tour is tourism activity. He visited holy places, not
tourists sights. Tirta Yatra, which means ‘traveling in search of holy water, was activity to visit
spiritual places aim at getting an unimaginable spiritual experience. Not only Hindus traveling
to get spiritual experiences, those who were catholic also visited Lourdes in Franch and
Moslems vitised Mecca to get similar experiences. Visiting sacred places was an morally
important activities and received growing resources recently both for Hindu and Moslem. For
Hindus visiting sacred place was not mandatory but it was different for Moslems. One of
Fundamental belief of Islam is Visiting Mecca and becoming Great Hajj.
Tour providers offered a sacred places visit package tour in bundling price strategy
either for Umrah or Tirta Yatra. The price range have been between Rp. 2.900.000,- - Rp.
4.300.000,- for inbound sacred places visit tours and for outbound sacred places visit tours the
price range have been Rp. 19.000.000,- - Rp.32.000.000,- . Three of them popular sacred places
destinations in Indonesia have been Gunung salak Temple which located in Bogor and Mount
Bromo which is located in Probolinggo, East Java Province and Pura Mandara Giri Semeru
Agung, in Lumajang, East Java. Balinese people also visited some sacred places which is located
in India. They are places which have relationship with the Mahabharata or Ramayana characters
such as Dwaraka city, Ganges river, Mathura city as well as Kuruksetra.
The number of tourist coming from India was increasing 36,38% in 2014 compared to
that of 2013. The number of visitors coming from India in 2013 and 2014 were 64,578 and
88,074 respectively. Part of the reason behind the fact is culture similarity between India and
Bali. As we all know, most of Balinese people faith in Hindu so does India where 940 million
people reside in. it is important for us to identify what are the individual motivation to visit
sacred places and is there any situation that moderated the decision to visit. The information
would be fruitful to improve the effectiveness marketing strategy of sacred places package tour
product in the future both in domestic market and foreign target market which has similar
cultural background.
According to Karel Werner's Popular Dictionary of Hinduism, most Hindus’ places of
pilgrimage are associated with legendary events from the lives of various gods. Almost any place
can become a focus for pilgrimage, but in most cases they are sacred cities, rivers, lakes, and
mountain (Werner,1994). Hindus are encouraged to undertake pilgrimages during their lifetime,
though this practice is not considered absolutely mandatory. Most Hindus visit sites within their
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region or locale periodically such as Besakih Temple, Tanah Lot Temple, Uluwatu Temple,
Rambut Siwi Temple and others. Today with increasing financial capacity there have been
increasing number of Balinese who visiting some sacred places in India. There are some
popular sacred places destinations. One of the popular destinations is Haridwar, located in the
foothills of Himalayas, which is dedicated to Brahma, Wisnu and Ciwa. It is an eternal spiritual
destination together with six sites as the top seven holy places in India. The second one is
Kumbh Mela which is popular for its festival held in Haridwar once in 12 year, involved
millions of people who come to bath in Ganges river to cleanse their sins. Tirupati Balaji is the
third as one of the oldest temple. It is located on Tirupeti hill in the southern banks of Sri
Swami Pushkarni River in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Vaishno Devi temple is also one of the
oldest temples in India which is located on the holy Trikuta hills of the Shivalik Hill range. It is a
place where we pray for Goddess 'Durga'. Millions of devotees from all over the country visit
the temple for Vaishno Devi's blessings. The cave shrine of Vaishno Devi consists of three
deities, Mahalakshmi, Mahakali and Mahasaraswati. It is believed that pilgrims who visit this
deity seldom go back disappointed.
Let’s take a look at Mecca as one of World Destination visited by people coming from
all over the world to accomplish religion belief. Similar to Hindu, Muslim people visit Mecca
once in his or her lifetime. The pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the five pillar of Islam and it is a
mandatory religious duty for Muslim that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by all
adult Muslims who are physically and financially capable of undertaking the journey, and can
support their family during their absence. The gathering during the Hajj season is considered the
largest annual gathering of people in the world. Medina Another is also important place for
Muslims, the second holiest site in Islam, the final resting place of Muhammad in Al-Masjid al-
Nabawi (Long, 2011). According Fuad Hasan Masyur, Chief of Association Hajj and Umrah
Service Provider Indonesia (AMPHURI), In 2014 the number of Jemaah Umrah from Indonesia
was 800.000 people. The number of Moslem people who interested in Umrah was increasing.
Terror Management Theory asserted that religion was created as a means for humans to
cope with their own mortality and from which we learn that there is life after deat and simply
being religious, it would reduce the effects of mortality salience on worldview defense. In the
mortality salience, these threats are simply experimental reminders of one’s own death through
exposure of death events or an object which has association with death such as making eyes
contact with life insurance logo, attending cremation ritual, or watching TV broadcasting
terrorist attack victims or air craft accident as well as asking participants to write about their
own death.
Thoughts of death have also been found to increase religious beliefs (Siegel,2015). At an
implicit, subconscious level, this is the case even for people who claim to be nonreligious
(Heflick, Goldenberg, 2012). Sacred places tours have been also known as religious tourism,
classified as specific interest tourism with significant economic benefit for the host community
and psychological one for the tourists. It is important to find out if there any specific factor
triggering individual attitude to visit sacred places package tour product offered to the specific
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target market. The objective of study is to identify relationship between Mortality Salience
condition and attitude toward sacred places package tour as well as willingness to pay the
package from Terror Management Theory (TMT) developed by Greenberg, Solomon and
Pyszczynski, (1986). The contribution of the study was providing fruitful information in
improving marketing practices of sacred places visit package tour and identify when would the
target market more vulnerable to persuade so that marketing communication more effective to
induce positive response from the target group (Kirchler,& Hoelzl, 2015).
Terror Management Theory and Response Individual toward Sacred Places Package Tour.
Many people are more motivated by social pressures. Specifically for younger people,
mortality salience was stronger in eliciting changes of one's behavior when it brought
awareness to the immediate loss of social status or position, rather than a loss, such as death that
one could not imagine and feels far off (Martin,Kamins,2010). There were some different
factors to take into consideration, such as how strongly an individual feels toward a decision,
their level of self-esteem, and the situation around them. TMT described that religions and
cultures were symbolic systems that act to provide life with meaning and value (Solomon,
Greenberg, Pyszczynski, 1991). It was created as a means to cope with their own mortality for
human creature. We believe in life after death, and simply being religious, to reduce the effects
of mortality salience. Mortality salience is the cognitive accessibility and process through which
an individual considers the inevitability of their own death. Death thoughts accessibility had also
been found to increase religious beliefs.
The mortality salience hypothesis (MS) of Terror Management Theory stated that if
indeed one’s cultural worldview, or their self-esteem serves a death-denying function, then
threatening these constructs should produce defenses aimed at restoring psychological
equanimity such as returning the individual to a state of feeling invulnerable. Research findings
show that reminding death activated worldview defense mechanism. Greenberg et al.(1990)
reported that in high mortality condition participants were more favorably inclined toward
others of the same religious beliefs. Nelson, Moore, Olivetti and Scott (1997) also found that in
High Mortality salience condition participants more positive toward in group members than out
group members as well as held more favorable perception toward domestic product than in
normal condition. When mortality made salient foreign brand was less desirable (Nelson,
Moore, Olivetti, & Scott,1997).
Religion is a major individual difference variable that received less attention. TMT researchers
saw shared conception, that we know as culture as an essential and collective psychological
defense that is necessary for anxiety prone creature to act adaptively. There is a relationship
among cultural factors, the terror inherent in human existence and self esteem
(Greenberg et al., 1997). TMT posits that humankind used the same intellectual capacities that
gave rise to this problem to fashion cultural beliefs and values that provided protection against
this potential anxiety. According to TMT, self-esteem is used as a buffer for people to help them
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cope with anxiety; it is a coping mechanism set in place to help control their terror, along with
realizing that humans are animals just trying to manage the universe Self-esteem is a sense of
personal value, that is obtained by believing in two things; The validity of one’s cultural
worldview, and that one is living up to standards that are part of the worldview (Pyszczynski,
Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, Schimel, 2004). The relationship explained why individuals need,
seek and strive to maintain and increase self esteem. Individual maintain self esteem by
accomplishing culturally standard behavior. Consistent with Mortality Salience hypotheses,
Attitude either Moslems or Hindus toward either Umrah or Torta Yatra package tour were
predicted more positive in High Mortality Salience condition. Relationship between mortality
salience condition and attitude toward Tirta Yatra and Umrah as the followings.
H1a: In High Mortality salience condition individual attitude (Moslem) toward Umrah package
tour product was more positive than that in low mortality salience condition.
H1b: In High Mortality salience condition individual attitude (Hindus) toward Tirta Yatra
package tour product was more positive than that in low mortality salience condition.
Willingness to pay (WTP) is the maximum amount an individual is willing to sacrifice to
procure a good or avoid something undesirable. The price of any goods transaction will thus be
any point between a buyer's willingness to pay. Willingness to pay for sacred places package
tour product was a proxy to perceived benefit of the product. Because in high mortality
salience condition, the need to maintain self esteem was higher than in normal/low mortality
salience condition, individuals would be strengthen their worldview by value more positive
behavior that was prescribed by the religion or cultural. They were predicted willing to sacrifice
more financial resource to consume the offering because the perceived value of the activities
were higher than in normal condition. Mortality salience reported has effect on worldview
affirmation strengthen support for local product that was indicated on higher willingness to pay
for local product (Kirchler & Hoelzl, 2015) so that why when reminded their own mortality,
individual tended to experience an elevated need to feel secure in their cultural worldview. The
finding showed that following mortality salience induction , compared to failure salience, the
world affirming prime uniquely increased willingness to pay higher prices for foreign product.
H1a: In High Mortality salience condition willingness to pay (Moslem) for Umrah package tour
was higher than that in low mortality salience condition.
H1b: In High Mortality salience condition willingness to pay (Hindus) for Tirta Yatra package
tour was higher than that in low mortality salience condition.
Experiment.
To test research hypotheses, experiment conducted in Denpasar involving 60
undergraduate students attending International Business Management class in March 2015. 30
participants were Hindu and the rest were Moslem. Participants received academic credit for
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their involvement. The mean of participants age was 20 years old. They were informed that
they would participated in consumer survey conducted in Bali for the year 2015.
After arrived at the class, participants asked to fill mortality salience induction
questionnaire as it was used by Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997) and then
they completed word puzzle form to distract puzzle to distract and to activate death thought
following mortality salience manipulation. After completed world puzzle assignment
respondents completed missing word form to check individual mortality salience. At the end
of the first session they asked to report their emotion state. To make sure that induction didn’t
stimulate negative affection state of individual then they were divided in two group, where the
first group was those in high motality salience and the second one was those in low mortality
salience. Fear of death questionnaire consisted of 12 statements to which they could respond
with a yes or no answer such as : I am very afraid to die. Following the manipulation of
mortality salience, participants completed short version of positive-negative affect scale
(PANAS, Watson,Clark and Tellegen,1988).
Finally the participants completed form to express their attitude toward sacred places
package tours product and filled some questions regarding at what price they would not buy the
package tour products because they could afford them. Attitude was measured by multi
dimension of product attributes such as how interesting was the package tour product; how was
the value of the package tour offered to personal consumer ; how was the effect of the package
tour on experience enrichment. Quality of the instruments were acceptable reflected on their
validity and reliability parameters. Attitude instruments was good with total variance
explained 63% and Cronbach alpha 77% while willingness to pay instrument validity was 58%
and Cronbach Alpha was 73%.
Result.
There were no difference positive affect score between high mortality salience and low
mortality salience condition, F= 0,06; p=0.78. the two group held positive affection both in high
mortality salience condition and in low mortality salience condition. The result indicated that
mortality salience induction was not resulted different emotion for both treatment group and
control group.
Individual attitude toward Umrah ( AttM_high = 6,8 ; AttM_low = 4,3; p= 0,042) and
Tirta Yatra (( AttH_high) = 5,8 ; AttH_low) = 4,5; p= 0,048) package tour were positive in high
mortality salience condition than in low mortality salience condition. In High Mortality Salience
condition willingness to sacrifice financial resource was higher than in Low Mortality Salience
Condition. Moslem Individuals sacrifice more in High Mortality Salience Condition than in Low
Salience Mortality salience Condition ( WTPM_high = Rp. 28.800.000,- vs WTPM_low=Rp.
19.700.000,- ; p= 0,038) and Hindu Individuals also were willing to pay higher price in High
Mortality Salience Condition than in Low Mortality Salience Condition ( WTPH_high = Rp.
23.700.000,- vs WTPH_low=Rp. 15.700.000,- ; p= 0,041 ).
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Result indicated that in high mortality salience condition participants held more positive
attitude and were willing to pay higher price for sacred places package tour than that in low
mortality salience condition.
Discussion.
The result reported that target market held more favorable attitude toward sacred
places package tour products in high mortality condition relatively compared to that in low
mortality salience condition. Both those whose belief stated that visiting sacred places once
a lifetime mandatory or not. According TMT individual responded positively to sacred places
package tour products because the product was culturally prescribed to accomplish when they
were able to do so. The response was a reflection of worldview bolstering behavior to
attenuate death anxiety and to build psychological security and comfort because they were
living up to standard. They also allocated more money for the product indicated that they value
the activities more positive in high mortality salience condition than that in low mortality
salience condition. The research findings uncovered valuable opportunity in high mortality
salience condition because in this condition target market tend to respond favorably toward
the product than in normal condition willing to pay higher than in normal condition because of
the higher perceived value of the product.
Marketers were recommended to insert sacred places package tour ads after the
television broadcasting the death news to exploit the effect of high mortality salience
condition to improve marketing strategy and to close the transaction effectively. Beside of
fruitful contribution to marketing practices in developing marketing strategy particularly
regarding tourism destination, the study could be extend in the future. Researchers need to find
out if gender plays significant role in relationship between mortality salience and attitude
toward sacred places package tour products as well as between mortality salience and
willingness to pay. The role of self esteem played in relationship between mortality salience
and attitude toward sacred places package tour products also need to explore in the future to
understand its potential impact on willingness to pay and intention to buy regarding religious
tourism products.
Refferences
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Study of the Prophet's Mosque. Penerbit UTM. pp. 88–89,109. ISBN 9789835203732.
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esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements.
Academic Press.
3. Heflick, Nathan; Goldenberg, J. (2012). "No atheists in foxholes: Arguments for (but not
against) afterlives buffer mortality salience effects for atheists". British Journal of Social
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1049-3
Table .1. THE BEST 20 DIRECT FOREIGN TOURIST ARRIVALS TO BALI
IN JANUARY - DESEMBER 2014
NATIONALITY R 2013
SHARE
(%) R 2014
+/-
(%)
SHARE
(%)
AUSTRALIAN I 826,385 25.21 I 991,923 20.03 26.33
CHINESE II 387,533 11.82 II 586,300 51.29 15.57
MALAYSIAN IV 199,232 6.08 III 225,572 13.22 5.99
JAPANESE III 208,115 6.35 IV 217,402 4.46 5.77
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SINGAPOREAN V 138,388 4.22 V 179,719 29.87 4.77
SOUTH KOREAN VI 134,452 4.10 VI 146,088 8.65 3.88
FRENCH VIII 125,247 3.82 VII 128,350 2.48 3.41
BRITISH IX 122,406 3.73 VIII 127,040 3.79 3.37
TAIWANESE VII 126,914 3.87 IX 114,504 -9.78 3.04
AMERICAN X 105,863 3.23 X 111,640 5.46 2.96
GERMAN XI 100,663 3.07 XI 105,471 4.78 2.80
INDIAN XIV 64,578 1.97 XII 88,074 36.38 2.34
DUTCH XIII 72,341 2.21 XIII 76,082 5.17 2.02
RUSSIAN XII 79,337 2.42 XIV 72,127 -9.09 1.91
NEW ZEALAND XV 48,749 1.49 XV 62,162 27.51 1.65
CANADIAN XVIII 33,508 1.02 XVI 37,523 11.98 1.00
HONGKONG XVI 37,412 1.14 XVII 35,538 -5.01 0.94
PHILIPINE XIX 30,031 0.92 XVIII 32,737 9.01 0.87
ITALIAN XX 29,106 0.89 XIX 30,713 5.52 0.82
THAI XVII 34,728 1.06 XX 30,247
-
12.90 0.80
TOTAL 2,904,988 88.60 3,399,212 17.01 90.25
OTHER
NATIONALITIES 373,610 11.40
367,426 -1.66 9.75
TOTAL
ARRIVAL 3,278,598 100.00
3,766,638 14.89 100.00
Note: R = Ranking