Tourist Behaviour: Themes and Conceptual Schemes / Edition 1

by Philip L. Pearce

Overview

Tourism is an inherently social phenomenon. Tourists travel with others and experience places and cultures through interacting with both familiar and unfamiliar others. This volume presents a thorough tour of the social psychological processes which underpin contemporary travel. The fascinating phenomenon of tourist behaviour deals with topics such as motivation, destination choice, travellers' on site experiences, satisfaction and learning. This book uses an array of developing and recently constructed conceptual frameworks to both synthesise what is established, and to create new insights and directions for further analysis and, ultimately, management action.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845410223
Publisher:	Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Publication date:	09/27/2005
Series:	Aspects of Tourism , #27
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.15(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Philip L. Pearce is Foundation Professor of Tourism at James Cook University, Australia. His research focuses on tourist behaviour, notably tourist motivation and experience, tourism and communities and tourism education and research.

Read an Excerpt

Tourist Behaviour

Themes and Conceptual Schemes

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By Philip L. Pearce

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2005 Philip L. Pearce
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84541-022-3

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CHAPTER 1

Studying Tourist Behaviour

Beyond the Personal Perspective

The noted adventurer and travel writer Redmond O'Hara argues that you write well about a topic only if you have experienced it and, at times, have been traumatised by it (O'Hara, 2003). Does the author, a Professor of Tourism, have just such a range of traumatic experiences to help him write about tourist behaviour? Fortunately the answer is, yes. Some incidents include being petrified in Panama City, being propositioned in Phuket, and being mugged in Marseille. On other occasions the experiences have included enduring all-day airline delays in China. In one such delay in X'ian, the one available plastic seat in the airport lounge was not made any more comfortable by the public announcer's frequent call – 'The flight to Shanghai is not leaving because the plane is somewhere else'. There is indeed much personal material upon which to draw. Undoubtedly readers too have varied and sometimes traumatic personal experiences to recount: effectively titillating tales to tell about their travels.

Nevertheless this is a research-based account of tourist behaviour and, while it might have been stimulated and enriched by personal experiences, it relies much more on the empirical work of an immediate research circle, on the efforts of leading scholars in tourist behaviour and on a diverse array of insights from occasional contributors to this field of study. It draws on the disciplines of psychology, sociology and anthropology but is most dependent on the emerging specialism of tourism studies, itself now a productive global research field (Jafari, 2000; Pearce, 1993a). The term behaviour will be interpreted in its widest psychological sense in this volume as a summary for the observable activities as well as the mental processes guiding and resulting from social life (Harré & Secord, 1972).

One particular advantage of adhering to a title with behaviour as the leading description of the area of interest is that it provides a focused reminder of the physical nature of human existence. Since much of the writing about tourists' views of their travels is sociological, and hence is often concerned with abstract systems and social structures, there is an emerging argument that demands that researchers recognise the limits, needs and characteristics of the human body in tourist study (Selanniemi, 2003). This may be as simple as recognising motion sickness and the effects of sleep deprivation on mood, or it may generate new conceptual appraisals such as in augmenting conventional ideas about destination images with a fuller recognition of the sensory responses that humans have to environments (Ashcroft, 2001; Veijola & Jokinen, 1994).

Additionally the term tourist behaviour is useful to both link and differentiate the material from the broader yet distinctively different literature describing consumer behaviour. The nature of these differences will be explored later in this chapter.

A further dimension of interest in the present volume that extends the study beyond a personal perspective lies in the geographical reach and scope of the material considered. A partial focus of this volume will be on emerging studies of tourist behaviour in Asia but these additional contributions will be viewed against a backdrop of several decades of work conducted predominantly in North America, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Some insights from European scholars will also be considered in select chapters.

A final and definitive extension of the present work beyond the personal perspective is the planned and systematic use of conceptual schemes and mini-theories to explain and interpret the topics pursued.

The Sin of Homogenisation

Tourists are not all alike. In fact, they are staggeringly diverse in age, motivation, level of affluence and preferred activities. Galani-Moutafi (1999) and Nash (2001) warn would-be analysts of tourist behaviour to avoid the sin of homogenisation, of treating all travellers as the same. They recommend that researchers should specify, wherever possible, which types of tourists are being discussed. The warning is appropriate at the start of a book on tourist behaviour. There will be few easy generalisations about tourists in the following pages. An important aim of the volume will be to provide multi-faceted accounts of the complexity of tourist behaviour while still recognising that it is convenient for both analysis and practice to work at the level of meaningful groups or market segments rather than purely individual experience. The importance of avoiding the sin of homogenisation will be re-emphasised in Chapter 2, where some of the key demographic factors frequently used to describe tourists are considered.

A Professional Approach: The Etic–Emic Distinction

An important step in moving towards a professional appraisal of tourist behaviour lies in recognising that there are multiple perspectives on behaviour. In particular one important approach arising out of research in linguistics and anthropology is the etic–emic distinction (Pike, 1966; Triandis, 1972). An emic approach is one that takes the perspective of the participant – the person engaging in the behaviour. The topic of interest may be the experiences of a young budget traveller, a senior tourist or an ardent birdwatcher, for example. The emic approach to their behaviour involves finding out from them how they see the world, how they look at the setting, the other people in it and the value of their experience. This can be contrasted with an etic approach where the researcher, as an observer and outsider, classifies and describes the tourist's behaviour. An example might be studying a young European budget traveller sun-tanning on an Australian beach. If the researcher asks the traveller to describe his or her experience (i.e. works at obtaining an emic perspective), the response may be 'Actually I'm worshipping the sun god. This is a deep cosmic experience for me to lie in the sun in wintertime because I come from Finland and fundamentally there is so little sun that this is absolutely marvellous for me'. The outside observer may simply have interpreted the behaviour as everyday relaxation. The core distinction is that, when researchers ask people to describe their experiences in their own words and not according to pre-judged categories, they are adopting an emic perspective and beginning to see the socially-constructed world from the participants' point of view (Gergen, 1978).

It can be suggested that both new students of tourist behaviour and senior scholars sometimes struggle with the multiple realities and challenges inherent in identifying emic and etic perspectives. For the new scholar it is sometimes difficult to see that a travel experience that he or she would never undertake could be fulfilling and rewarding for someone else. For example, a not-very-affluent student might find the expenditure on a luxurious hotel room at several hundred dollars a night to be an incomprehensible choice when the same amount of money might buy a camping trip with a white-water-rafting experience and a skydiving thrill. Equally, the cautious quieter tourist with a deep interest in wildlife experiences might find large expenditure on nightclubs, drinks and a party lifestyle in such Mediterranean resorts as Ibiza and the Greek Islands to be socially unattractive. The issues here extend beyond understanding to personal identity and deeply held social values.

Senior scholars too sometimes fail to grasp the range of meanings that certain subgroups of travellers bring to a setting. Thus de Albuquerque (1998) effectively scoffs at the notions of romantic tourism proposed by Pruitt and La Font (1995). He discounts the perspective that indirect payment by women for their companionship experiences with Caribbean beach boys constitutes romantic and meaningful relationships, and argues that it is simply prostitution. The fact that he failed to interview the women themselves and obtain an emic perspective somewhat compromises his argument.

In the arena of research into visitor conflict and crowding, Jacob and Shreyer (1980) have argued that disagreements sometimes arise because participants have a low tolerance of lifestyle diversity. Such a concept may partially explain the lack of insights described in the examples above, but there is more involved than simple tolerance. It is about recognising the full appreciation and value that other people experience from a different style of travel behaviours. The understanding and empathy for other people's behaviour that can be developed by emphasising an academic emic perspective is of considerable relevance in the tourism educational sphere. Young managers and junior executives assisting tourists, and designing and marketing experiences for them, have to be able to know empathically how their target group of visitors view the world. It can be argued here that a professional and workplace understanding of tourist perspectives can be built from researcher insights generated by building and distinguishing emic and etic perspectives.

Expressions within the Field

Rojek and Urry (1997: 1) report that tourism studies are beset with definitional problems, and comment that tourism 'embraces so many different notions that it is hardly useful as a term of social science'. Pearce, Morrison and Rutledge (1998) suggest that the emphasis placed on defining tourism depends on the goal of the analyst or practitioner. In this view what is emphasised in a definition of tourism will depend on the commentator, with planners, forecasters, academics and managers attending to different processes, connections and hierarchies of interest. For most tourism researchers, a working pathway through this definitional maze has been to subscribe to a basic or core systems model of tourism (c.f. Leiper, 1989; Mill & Morrison, 1985). The need to update and expand the reach of this core systems model is a topic of contemporary concern (Farrell & Twining-Ward, 2004). An additional difficulty is that tourism researchers frequently use words and expressions that are in everyday use. It is then difficult at times to impose more formal, tighter and more specific meanings on top of the existing language use. The very word 'tourist' is its own definitional problem child. Its first use and origins lie in the 17th century as a descriptor of the travellers undertaking the Grand Tour (Hibbert, 1969). It is used pejoratively by some to describe a superficial appraisal or experience of phenomenon and by others as a marker of affluence and freedom (Dann, 1996a). The word is used to describe both international and domestic travellers. The World Tourism Organisation definition of a tourist relates exclusively to international tourists. In this statistics-collecting framework, tourists are overnight visitors who cross international boundaries for periods of up to a year. Some travellers who are not included in the World Tourism Organisation statistics are diplomats, military personnel, refugees, people in transit, nomads and migrants (Pearce et al., 1998). More than 170 countries around the world have now agreed to conform to these definitional conventions in recording international arrivals. Nevertheless, for a study of tourist behaviour, particularly where there is an interest in the management of tourists, this definition is perhaps not as complex or complete as might be required. In particular it provides no guidance on how domestic tourists should be classified.

A study conducted by Masberg (1998) reflects the slippery and shifting definition of domestic tourists by regional authorities. Masberg interviewed managers and executives of convention and visitor bureaux (CVBs) in the United States. These organisations are often involved in lobbying for the expansion of tourism in the region and offer quite all-inclusive definitions of tourists. Some of the respondents defined their domestic tourists as 'people who travel 50 miles (80 kilometres) to come here', others said 'it's people who stay overnight in our region', while a third group suggested 'it's people who are here for pleasure'. These tourism organisation perspectives from the United States would probably be replicated in many other parts of the world, as an indication of growing visitor numbers is often an important argument when such CVBs seek funding from allied businesses and governments. The critical issue here is to be explicit in the definitions of the term 'tourist' when communicating research findings and in interpreting community perspectives on tourism. Clearly, not all researchers and analysts hold and work with exactly the same definition of the tourist as do their audiences. In the present volume, 'domestic tourists' will usually refer to visitors from outside the region of interest who stay for at least one night. The broader term of 'visitor' will be used to embrace international tourists, domestic tourists and tourist-facility users from the local region or home town.

'Consumer' is also a term used widely in literature that is relevant to this volume. It refers to people in both the public and private sector who are involved in the purchasing and experiencing of products. There are often specialist courses in consumer behaviour in universities and there are many parallels between consumer and tourist behaviour. Regrettably, the term 'consumer' has some negative connotations. Studies of consumer behaviour and the general use of the term 'consumption' have traditionally not addressed good environmental practices, good community links, and socially responsible actions. Overall there has been a tendency for studies in the mainstream consumer behaviour literature to pay limited attention to sustainability issues (Gee & Fayos-Sola, 1997). An awareness of this connotation is necessary in tourist behaviour studies where sustainability issues are a dominant focus (Moscardo, 1999).

The word 'customer' tends to have a business focus, and is used less in public settings, but is frequently employed in business or private sector settings. The term will be used from time to time in this volume, particularly when exploring and reflecting on the large topic of customer satisfaction.

There are some other useful terms that focus on the individual and his or her behaviour in relation to tourism settings. Sometimes the word 'user' is employed. This is a term that is useful in certain public facility contexts. Just as 'customer' is useful in a business context, the term 'user' is valuable when discussing individuals or groups who may be travelling along a highway and using open access public facilities such as a rest area. Both in everyday life and in the existing literature, commentators refer to a highway user or a beach user, rather than to a customer in such contexts.

'Client' is another expression that is occasionally useful. The term is usually reserved for professional services, so there are legal clients and clients for financial services. Travel agents often refer to their customers as clients. It is apparent that the term client connotes a serious professional service and may be used to upgrade the status of an industry sector. Indeed, it is quite common for the word client to be used in the sex trade (Ryan & Kinder, 1996).

'Participants' and 'stakeholders' are further terms of broad relevance to this discussion. They both refer to settings where the person is involved in a partnership, or acts in an advisory capacity. Many natural environment management agencies have stakeholder groups – people who help the agency staff make decisions about the settings that they caretake.

To complete the framework of relevant terms there are other circumstances where a person might be labelled a patient, a player, a spectator, an audience or a crowd member and some of these studies will be relevant to the interest in tourism. Nevertheless the focus of the volume will be specifically on tourists and tourist behaviour.

Tourist Behaviour: To Whom Does It Matter?

First, tourist behaviour tends to matter to tourists. People are concerned with their life experience – what they do – and they like to understand it. So, one answer to the question is that tourists themselves are very concerned with their own experiences and how to maximise each one, whether it be a short regional visit or an extended international holiday.

A second answer to the question is that tourist behaviour matters to people who are making decisions about tourists. There is a whole array of such decision-makers. They may be people in the public sector who provide permits for tour operators; they may be managers who let others go to the Great Barrier Reef or white-water rafting, or canoe down one of the scenic rivers in North America. All sorts of people are concerned with tourist behaviour because their job involves making an enabling decision or policy choice about tourist activities.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Tourist Behaviour by Philip L. Pearce. Copyright © 2005 Philip L. Pearce. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Studying Tourist Behaviour
Chapter 2 Social Roles and Individual Characteristics
Chapter 3 Motivation: The Travel Career Pattern Approach
Chapter 4 Perceiving and Choosing the Destination
Chapter 5 Social Contact for the Tourist
Chapter 6 The Tourists’ On-Site Experiences
Chapter 7 Tourists’ Reflections on Experience
Chapter 8 Synthesis and Further Analysis