Cultural Differences in Trust of Space Tourism Travel

Science fiction or not, commercial space travel is on the horizon. One of the most unknown concepts to public perception is the idea of traveling by spacecraft. The next frontier for mankind is space travel; however, there are many challenges that need to be met before space tourism travel becomes a reality. There are numerous companies on the cusp of making space travel a reasonable and affordable mode of transportation. Since the idea of traveling through space is so new, there is not a lot of data available about public perception. The purpose of this research, however, is to gather public input as to their personal levels of trust in space tourism travel. This data could be invaluable to an emerging company as strategic marketing techniques can be utilized with this information to increase their customer acquisition and spread the concept. This research was able to acquire input from both American and Indian participants through the use of Amazon’s ® Mechanical Turk ® program. Using an experimental design, the research analyzed the levels of trust between individuals from different cultural backgrounds as well as gender differences. After analyzing the collected data, it was determined that there was a significant interaction in the trust levels between country and gender, F(1, 392) = 6.379, p = 0.012, np2 = .016. The American female population was less trusting of space travel than the Indian female population. Practical implications and limitations to the study are also discussed.