The Taiwanese love motel – An escape from leisure constraints?

Abstract

The paper reports research derived from over 800 respondents who self-completed questionnaires while patronising love motels in the Taipei greater metropolitan region, Taiwan. The paper provides a brief history of Taiwanese love motels and distinguishes them from western massage parlours. Five clusters are found that are based on two primary canonical discriminate functions that explain 83 percent of the variance – the dimensions being sexual conventionality–adventurousness and comfort seeking. These dimensions are wholly consistent with the basic premise of the love motels, although additionally privacy for intimate relationships is also important. The survey questionnaire was based on a concept of physical and relationship constraints on leisure, and generally it was found that the ‘push’ factors based on a need to escape these constraints was weaker than the ‘pull’ factors of comfort and privacy.