Taoism, temples and tourists: The case of Mazu pilgrimage tourism

Abstract

This paper examines the proposal that pilgrimage sites are like other tourism destinations because they are multi-faceted products meeting the needs of both religious believers and more general holiday makers. The data are derived from a sample of 427 pilgrims to the temple of Da-Lin, a site of worship of the goddess, Mazu. Cluster analysis accords closely with self-professed levels of devotion to the goddess. One-quarter of the sample indicated profound levels of belief, and 40 percent expressed low self-assessed levels of devotion. Factor analysis showed that ‘having a holiday’ accounted for most of the discrimination on a scale related to motivation and satisfaction gained.