**6.3. Motivation factors**

#### *6.3.1. Push factors*

An exploratory factor analysis was carried out to identify the underlying dimensions of push factors. The measure of Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin was applied in all procedures, and all items had an eigenvalue of greater than 1. From the varimax-rotated factor matrix, four factors representing 61.05% of the explained variance were extracted from the analysis of the 19 push items of travel motivation. The four factors were 'novelty and knowledge seeking', 'rest and relax', 'achieve dream' and 'prestige' (**Table 1**). Moreover, all the factor loadings were greater than 0.580, and all factors had relatively high reliability coefficient ranging from 0.657 to 0.878. 'Novelty and knowledge seeking' emerged as the most important push factor that acted as a long-haul travel motivation to Penang (mean score of 4.371). The result of this study supports the finding from previous studies on long-haul travel [1, 2] that suggested that 'novelty and knowledge seeking' were the important push factors among long-haul travellers.

#### *6.3.2. Pull factors*

The same procedure was applied on the underlying dimensions of pull motivation factors. The measure of Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin was applied in all procedures, and all items had an eigenvalue greater than 1. Five factors were extracted from the analysis of the twenty pull items of travel motivation. These were 'attraction', 'culture and heritage', 'tourism facilities', 'price and quality' and 'environment'. These five dimensions represented 60.17% of the total variance (**Table 2**). Following the principal component analysis with varimax-rotation, all factors had relatively high reliability coefficient ranging from 0.738 to 0.804. Moreover, all the factor loadings were greater than 0.510. 'Culture and heritage' emerged as the most important pull factor that attracts respondents to Penang (mean score of 4.074) compared to the other factors.
