The study of motivation is quite complex since each individual has different reasons for consuming products and services. Past experience, life style, personality, and the image that an individual wants to project may all lead to different consumer motivations. In addition, the behavior process is the result of various "interrelated motives, which can vary from person to person and, over time, even with the same individual" (Dias & Cassar, 2005, p. 124). Park and Yoon (2009) point that motivational factors are a set of psychological needs that cause a feeling of psychological disequilibrium, which can be balanced again through the action of traveling. Thus, motivation would consist of needs, feelings, and the desires that lead people to manifest certain behaviors (Mowen & Minor, 2003). Many studies on tourism motivation take a more general view of the motivations of travelers, as if there was homogeneity of motives. However, we have to consider that different market segments identified by demographics (gender, age, marital status, children, etc.) or psychographics (personality, motivations, values, lifestyle, etc.) and different types of products may cause variations in traveler motivations (Chen & Sasias, 2014; Galloway et al., 2008, Swarbrooke & Horner, 2002; Abosag & Farah, 2014).

Traveler motivations are also influenced by the rules that guide the consumption habits of the era in which they live. Because of that, more recent studies are focusing on understanding the motivations of tourists in specific niches, such as golfers (Kim & Ritchtie, 2012), cruise travelers (Hung & Petrick, 2011), adventure tourists (Schneider & Vogt, 2012), wellness tourists (Voigt, Brown, & Howat, 2011), and divers (Ong & Musa, 2012).

Dann (1977) mentions that travel motivations stem from two concepts: anomie and ego exaltation. Anomie would be the desire to "transcend the sense of isolation inherent in everyday life" (Fodness, 1994, p. 556), which "can only be fulfilled if the individual gets away from it all on vacation" (Crompton, 1979, p. 441). The exaltation of the ego stems from the need for recognition, which is obtained through the status conferred by travel.

The study by Fodness (1994) groups motivations into three main functions: a) the knowledge function, which refers to the attitudes to help people organize what they know and to best understand the world; B) the expression-of-value function, which refers to the attitudes that allow an individual to express their values, divided into ego, self-esteem, and improvement; and c) the adjustment function, which is a recognition of the fact that people strive to minimize pain and maximize reward (pleasure).

As for studies on motivations, one of the most recurrent tourism motivation theories is Crompton's push-pull theory (1979). Abosag and Farah (2014) explain that the push and pull motives can be seen in the perspective by Oliver (1997) that differentiates consumers' needs, wants, and desires. For Oliver (1997, p. 136), "needs are more aligned with deficits, while wants are results from desired enhancements."

Push motivations are determinants of behavior, or internal psychological variables, which motivate a person to travel, such as self-realization, prestige, social interaction, or sense of achievement (Abosag & Farah, 2016, Gazley & Watling, 2015; Caber & Albayrak, 2016). That is, push motives are the very personal needs and desires of each traveler, which lead to a travel demand.

On the other hand, pull motives are external to individuals and determine the behavior; they are situational and are related more to the characteristics of the destination than to the internal needs or personal values of the tourist (Abosag & Farah, 2016). That is, pull motives are external destination forces or factors attributed to those destinations.

The push motive would explain the desire to travel, while the pull motive would explain the selection of the destination (Crompton, 1979; Lundberg, 1990, Gazley & Watling, 2015; Caber & Albayrak, 2016). Push factors relate to intangible issues, inherent to the traveler such as a desire for escape, rest, adventure, or prestige. On the other hand, pull factors relate to the tangible or intangible attractions of the destination (Uysal & Hagan, 1993, Gazley & Watling, 2015; Caber & Albayrak, 2016). Therefore, Galloway (2002) affirms that to analyze travel motivation it is mandatory to specify what are the pull and the push elements and how they are associated.

Several studies used the push and pull approach as motivational factors to understand tourist behavior in different themes, such as events (Lee, Lee, & Wicks, 2004), senior citizens (Jang & Wu, 2006), and satisfaction and destination loyalty (Yoon & Uysal, 2005). Kirkwood (2009) and Chang, Liu, and Chen (2014) explored the push and pull motives in entrepreneurial behavior and migration in virtual social networks.

The objective of this study is to understand the push and pull motives of people who love traveling. This construct, called travel orientation, was considered a strong and continuous affective/cognitive tendency towards active and passive involvement with travel. Although the tourists studied here represent a large population with varied interests and profiles, the group brings together people with an uncommon interest in trips.

Another important theory of tourist motivation is the Travel Career Ladder (TCL) developed by Pearce (1988, 1991, 1993), Pearce and Caltabiano (1983), and Moscardo and Pearce (1986). The theory states that the tourist motivation can occur at five different levels: a) relaxation needs; b) safety requirements; c) relationship needs; d) self-esteem and development needs; and e) the self-actualization and self-fulfillment need. Thus, travelers have a career in which the most inexperienced would turn to the most basic needs and the most experienced to the higher-level needs.

However, one should point out that similar to Maslow's theory, travelers do not move strictly from one level to another that is, some needs can prevail depending on the traveler's career stage.

Pearce and Lee (2005) found results that were a little inconsistent with the TCL theory. The authors found that the most important factors for the most experienced travelers were the joy of experimenting with different cultures and the thrill of having close encounters with nature. As for stimulation, personal development, relationships and security, self-fulfillment, nostalgia, romance, and recognition, they were higher -priority reasons for the less experienced. Motivators such as escape, relaxation, relationship improvement, and self-development were seen as part of the central spine of motivation for all travelers, whether they are more or less experienced.

The Model 3M of Motivation and Personality is a meta-theory, which integrates theories and models derived from the psychology and constructs related to consumer behavior, with the objective of constructing a general and coherent theory about motivation and personality (Mowen, 2000). Since its creation in 2000, the model was used successfully to evaluate the relations between behaviors, personality traits, and motivations in several studies around the world, such as in Pieske (2008), Basso (2008) Avelar (2011), Mowen, Longoria, and Sallee (2009), Sun and Wu (2011), Mowen and Sujan (2005), Fang and Mowen (2009), Scott and Mowen (2007), and Schneider and Vogt (2012).

The 3M Model suggests four levels of personality traits organized hierarchically (Figure 1). The way traits were arranged differs from the other personality models, since it creates a nomological network, which helps to explain the antecedent traits of the behavior studied (Mowen, 2000).

Figure 1 Source: Mowen (2000)

Mowen (2000) explains that the structure of personality traits can be organized according to increasing levels of abstraction, starting from elementary personality traits, which are abstract and comprehensive, to behaviors that can be easily observed. The study by Schneider and Vogt (2012) is a good example to show how the four levels of traits are used.

At the primary level of the Schneider and Vogt (2012) framework are the personality traits indicated by Mowen (2000): openness to experience, conscientiousness, introversion, agreeable, emotional instability, need for body resources, need for material resources, and need for arousal. The elementary traits are related to individual preferences and predispositions due to genetic heritage and what is learnt at the beginning of an individual's life (Mowen, 2000; Monteiro, 2006).

The elementary traits were not evaluated in this study because with the addition of the push and pull motives, the model structure needed to be simplified for reasons of parsimony. Mowen and Sujan (2005) also conducted a study using the 3M Model without including the elementary traits.

This study starts modeling at the level of compound traits, defined as the elementary traits plus the effects of the individual's learned history and cultural environment. Schneider and Vogt (2012) studied the following constructs at the compound level: need for learning, competitiveness, and altruism.

The third level consists of situational traits, which represent the tendency to act in specific behavioral contexts. They are a combination of elementary traits, compound traits, prior learning, and context. Schneider and Vogt (2012) used the following constructs at the situational level: interest in cultural experiences and need for uniqueness. The situational trait used in this study was travel orientation, the main construct of the model.

At the fourth and last level are superficial traits (e.g., consuming ecological products or the act of travel), which represent long-lasting dispositions to act in specific behavioral ways. Schneider and Vogt (2012) studied the propensity for adventure tourism at the superficial level, which was the focus of their research.

Compound and situational traits are related to the internal behavior motivators, while superficial traits refer to the external motivators or true behavior (Basso, 2008), which this study associates with the act of traveling or with the frequent traveler.

Similar to Mowen and Sujan (2005) and Fang and Mowen (2009), the motives identified in the qualitative phase of this study were added to the personality traits such as push/situational and pull/superficial motives to form the model studied. The authors explain that these motives can operate at both levels, so the model can be structured and motives incorporated at both the situational and superficial levels, which is what this study's model also followed (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Source: Authors (2015)

Following these previous studies, push motives are set as situational motives, preceded by compound personality traits and acting as antecedents of travel orientation. Push motives predates the situational trait of travel orientation because they refer to what drives a person to travel, which is an internal motive.

The compound traits in the 3M Model predate the situational traits, so this study sets them as antecedents of the situational motives, which predate the situational trait of travel orientation. We propose the following hypotheses to evaluate the relationships cited:

There is a positive linear relationship between compound personality traits and push/situational motives (H1a, H1b, H1c, H1d, H2a, H2b, H2c, H2d, H3a, H3b, H3c, and H3d).

There is a positive linear relationship between push/situational motives and travel orientation (H4a, H4b, H4c, and H4d).

The motives and the compound traits mentioned in each hypothesis were identified at the qualitative phase and are shown in Table 3.

Pull motives are set as superficial motives and are preceded by travel orientation. They are external motives that affect the act of traveling and determine the kind of trip the person chooses. These are summed up in the following hypotheses:

There is a positive linear relationship between pull/superficial motives and the act of traveling (H5a, H5b, H5c, and H5d).

There is a positive linear relationship between travel orientation and pull/superficial motives (H6a, H6b, H6c, and H6d).

Aiming to identify the motivations and compound personality traits of those who love traveling, a qualitative phase was initiated with semi-structured in-depth interviews. The initial cases consisted of three people who said they love traveling and are very much involved with travel issues. Thus, the snowball technique (Malhotra, 2001) was employed, where one interviewee refers to other individuals who also love to travel, and thus the other 13 people were identified. In total, 16 people, with different profiles were interviewed. All of them were from Brazil and were distributed in four different locations: Brasília (Federal District), São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro (Table 1).

The number of cases was determined by the saturation point as per Fontanella, Luchesi, Saidel, Ricas, Turato, and Melo (2011) and Fontanella, Ricas and Turato (2008). These authors explain that when answers start becoming very repetitive and similar, without providing anything significantly new, it means the investigation has achieved the saturation point and the sample size is adequate.

The interviews were clearly oriented to a research about people who love traveling; respondents were encouraged to speak as long as they wanted about the issues raised (Table 2). The interviews lasted from 40 to 90 minutes and were conducted between September and December 2015. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed for further analysis.

The analysis was performed using content analysis techniques (Bardin, 2009) with the support of a software named Atlas Ti 5.7.1. In accordance with Bandeira-de-Mello and Cunha (2006), we performed a careful reading of all the interviews to understand the repetitive points and to identify the complete ones for codification and initial categorization. Then, the similarities and differences found in the answers were systematically compared to generate conceptual categories grouped according to selected phrases from the interviews. A numerical analysis of the citations for each category was made, identifying groundedness, which refers to the number of fragments encoded with a certain code. Thus, we were able to identify the most important categories, or those with greater groundedness, to deem them the most recurrent motivators and personality traits in this study.

In the quantitative phase, we distributed an online self-administered survey questionnaire through Facebook, e-mail, and travel discussion forums. A total of 748 individuals from Brazil responded to the questionnaire. The sample size was determined in accordance with the requirement of the analysis techniques suggested by Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, and Tathan (2009) and Hair, Hult, Ringle, and Sarstedt (2014a).

Since it was not possible to know if the respondent really likes to travel, we used the construct Travel Orientation as a central construct model to filter this issue. This construct enabled the measurement of how much travel-oriented the respondent was, so we were able to use structural equation modeling to evaluate the relation of the Travel Orientation construct with other studied constructs.

As the theoretical and conceptual analyses performed indicated the presence of formative constructs (Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2014b), we decided to interpret the data using structural equation modeling with partial least squares. This method was chosen, because PLS is strongly indicated to deal with formative constructs (Hair et al., 2014a).

Seven main motivations of travel lovers were identified and classified according to Crompton's (1979) push and pull motives. Four compound personality traits were also identified.

The motives search for self-knowledge and personal development (AUT), search for authenticity and freedom (EUAUT), and break the routine and escape from reality (ROT) were classified as travel orientation antecedents (push). This classification was made because these constructs seemed to point to an internal traveler issue that drives the desire to travel.

These interviewees' comments exemplify push motives:

Search for self-knowledge and personal development (AUT)

Travel alters my behavior, with my way of dealing with the reality here; it increases my ability to tolerate differences, to open my mind about the size of the world, and to value what may be different and people's capacity to build new and better things for the world (E15).

Ah, it is life changing. I think it was as if a paradigm was broken, right? This is what I told you at the beginning, that you think it is very difficult, very complicated to travel, but it is not ... I learnt a lot. ... So, I changed the way I see myself, my attitudes, and priorities (E10).

Search for authenticity and freedom (EUAUT)

I think that if you get rid of some cultural and social issues of your own reality, this inevitably brings you to a higher level of (...); you are going somewhere where most people do not know you, and in a way you are a blank page. (E15)

It is the literal meaning of traveling, my dear; if you do not travel, you are imprisoned. But if you travel, you are free. You are stuck in one place, in just one place, for instance, Belo Horizonte, and you are only in Belo Horizonte! You are imprisoned. You leave Belo Horizonte, and you are free! So if you do not travel, it is like you are in jail. (E11)

Break the routine and escape from reality (ROT)

So I think that travelling is really to escape from this routine, from the beans and rice you eat every day, and trying to live other things. (E2)

On the other hand, the motives experience cultural diversity (DIV), experience adventures and challenges (AVE), seek novelty (NOV), and have stories to tell (HIS) were classified as pull/causes triggered by travel orientation. The reasoning for this classification was that these related more to external issues, allowing for choice in the type of travel and/or choice of destination. The following comments exemplify pull motives:

Experience cultural diversity (DIV)

It is because I like to meet new people, I like to get to know different cultures and different languages. (E16)

I like tourism. If the city I am in has a museum or something like that, I like to visit it, I like to know the local culture, I like to chat with people that live in that region, to know the history of the place. (E2)

I really like to walk in the streets. I like the typical tourist attractions; however I also like to see what is behind those attractions. (E9)

Experience adventures and challenges (AVE)

It is so much fun that in the middle of my trip to China, I went to Vietnam. That was the craziest thing I have ever done in my life, and still I do not know why I did not do more. (E11)

An experience can turn into a challenge. In China, one thing I wanted very much was to test my limit, that is, to eat something exotic. So, I ate a scorpion in China, which was something I wanted to do. In a way, it also has to do with the capacity to overcome something. (E15)

Seek novelty (NOV)

I think that in my case, there has to be something new. There has to be something that will add value, and for you it is something different, regardless of where you are (E5).

I like to travel, as I like to see different things. I find it an exceptional experience to be in an environment totally different from what I am used to, to see a completely different reality (E11).

Have stories to tell (HIS)

I am alive and I have stories to tell. Otherwise, I do not live just to survive. Something like this: to be proud of my life, I want to have experienced a lot of interesting stuff and therefore I want to live even more interesting stories (E11).

There, I feel the willingness to talk with people I like, people who are close to me, and talking about the trip. ... (E9)

Besides the motives, the following compound personality traits are also defined during the qualitative phase: need to learn (NA), self-Efficacy (AUF), need for play (ND), and romanticism (ROM). The first three were already applied by Mowen (2000) in the 3M Model, and are adapted for this study. The definition of each compound trait/construct is provided in Table 3.

The compound personality trait - romanticism (ROM) - was found at the interviews identified by the subcategories imaginative, dreamer, and curious. That confirms what was found in the literature about romanticism in traveling as seen in Holbrook and Olney (1995). The authors studied romanticism and wanderlust to explore the effect of personality on tourist preferences, dividing the preferences between classicism and romanticism. The authors cite Pirsig (1974, p. 67) contrasting the two concepts:

The romantic way is mostly inspired, imaginative, creative, and intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate [...] The classical mode [...] is simple, unadorned, emotionless, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order to chaos [...] People tend to think and feel excessively in one way or another.

The interviewees showed a tendency to be more romantic than classic, because it was set as a construct of the model. The following comments exemplify the romanticism trait:

I need a little magic, a little imagination, and travel can boost that. (E11)

I am very dreamy; sometimes I stop and dream about these things that I would like them to happen to me, right, that they materialized in my life. (E2)

I am Virgo, so that every time I need to check if the lead weights are pinning me to the ground. I dream a lot! (E9)

The constructs/traits travel orientation (TO) and frequent traveler (VF) were also defined according to the qualitative phase that identified five recurrent behaviors among the interviewed: 1) they set travel as a high priority of their lives; 2) they influence other people; 3) they make specific savings and/or commit part of the budget to travel; 4) they value the planning and research phase as a special stage of the journey; 5) they have a great trip (in terms of distance, complexity of planning, and financial investment) at least once a year.

According to the qualitative results, we structured a nomological model, based on Mowen's (2000) and Crompton's (1979) recommendations (push and pull).

As seen in Figure 3, the model goes from more abstract elements to more concrete behavior. It aggregates the compound traits of personality as the antecedents of push motives, preceding situational travel, which in turn precedes the pull motives that affect superficial traits, that is, concrete behavior (the act of traveling). We evaluated the model in the quantitative phase, as described in the sequence.

Figure 3 Source: Authors (2015)

The consumers studied, namely, those who really like to travel even if they may have different interests, have a great propensity to acquire more tourist products, services, and experiences than other tourists. Thus, those in the Brazilian tourism business can benefit from the findings of this research and use these to develop products and services that are more consistent with the motivations identified herein.

The division of motivations such as push and pull was carried out with the aim of better understanding what stimulates people who love to travel, looking at the internal and more intangible (push) and external and more tangible (pull) sides. Therefore, marketers can better direct their efforts either to arouse in people the desire to travel, or to direct the choice of place and/or type of trip.

To clarify how we classified the push and pull motives, it is important to remember that push motives are presented as internal an intangible once they relate more to personal questions or travelers' desires (self-knowledge and personal development (AUT), search for authenticity and freedom (EUAUT), and break the routine and escape from reality (ROT)). Moreover, pull motives are cited as external and tangible because they relate to what the locality or kind of trip can offer to travelers (experience cultural diversity (DIV), experience adventures and challenges (AVE), seek novelty (NOV), and have stories to tell (HIS)).

Related to the pull motives that influence the choice of the place to go or the kind of trip, it is relevant to highlight the have stories to tell (HIS) motive. Lindstrom (2012) sees an advantage in using the promotion of stories as important elements in building a strong brand. Thus, tourism companies could promote a story exchange among their customers as a way to attract travel lovers' attention, allowing them to promote their own personal experiences and inspiring them to go to a specific place or learn about a specific type of trip.

Yet relating to the pull motives, the highlighted statements "When I am travelling, I like to deeply experience the local habits and see how people live" and "When I am travelling I very much like to be in a completely different environment from what I am used to" provide points of reference for the development of tourism services, focusing on promoting a relationship with the local public and the creation of differentiated spaces such as hotels and theme parks.

The pull motive with the highest indices was searching for adventures and challenges (AVE). Therefore, marketing professionals should invest in products and services that meet this need. In addition, it could be interpreted that since travel lovers appear to appreciate the challenges that travel provides, they may prefer to travel independently, rather than in organized excursions.

Relating to the push motives, searching for self-knowledge and personal development (AUT) can be exploited by tourism professionals through the creation of products and services that appeal to self-knowledge arousing in people the desire to travel: offering travel accompanied by coaching professionals, travel combined with courses on self-knowledge, resorts or spas for meditation, and other self-oriented activities, and promoting content that identifies the act of traveling as an opportunity to gain self-knowledge, for example.

Although most of the motives explored here have already been researched, this study took a concentrated approach in a few academically explored traveler profiles, focusing on motivations related specifically to people who love to travel and who are considered major stimulators and fomenters of tourism. From the perspective of consumer behavior and studies on personality and motivation, the research corroborates the further development of the 3M Model, in that it investigates a behavior not yet explored by the model and it proposes the addition of push and pull motives at different levels of the model.

The decision not to study the level of elementary traits of the 3M Model is a limitation of the study. It was carried out in an attempt to produce a streamlined questionnaire and avoid tiring respondents. However, the possibility to extensively analyze the relationships among elementary traits and other traits and motives studied was lost. A subsequent investigation could include elementary traits, to add greater detailed personality questions for travel lovers.

As this quantitative research did not differentiate between traveler profiles or the level of "career/amount of experience" (Pearce, 1988, 1991, 1993), a future study could perform a cluster analysis oriented toward an identification of travel orientation levels and the relationship between those levels and the act of travelling. Some people may have great travel orientation and have identified themselves with the motives, although they would not be considered frequent travelers. The presence of such clusters could provide different results for the analysis of the model, what can cause an unobserved heterogeneity, as mentioned by Hair et al. (2014b).

As the sample consisted mainly of women and people of higher income and schooling, it could affect the outcomes and reduce the power of generalization of the data, emphasizing the motivations that rich and educated women value the most and surpassing men's motivations. For this reason, future studies could include a more heterogeneous population, promoting a sample with a balanced quantity of men and women and a more varied range of income and schooling. In addition, because we only investigated Brazilians, further studies should replicate the scales used here to investigate people from other nationalities in a cross-cultural study.