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Discussions on tourism development address the urgent need to reduce the negative impacts of tourism on tourist destinations. Despite decades of trying to find potential ways to foster sustainability, however, current tourism development is still mainly driven by political interests and growth agendas. In spite of concepts intending to improve sustainable tourism development, negative dynamics, such as over-tourism and the exploitation of nature and local communities, dominate the current reality of tourism. This article focuses on the concept of degrowth as a potential solution for rethinking tourism policy and practices to ensure greater sustainability. Its aim is to explore the gap between these policies and the academic theories on instigating sustainable change, and the actual reality of the tourism industry, which is primarily driven by economic motivations such as growth.

To explore this dichotomy, this paper investigates the values of tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs. Small businesses are the most dominant group in the industry in terms of numbers. I contend that researching their viewpoint on current developmental trends could lead to valuable insights into how to tackle this gap between theory and reality. This paper also explores how the degrowth paradigm may promote sustainability in tourism, as well as the potential role that tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs could play in this development. The discussion is illustrated by a case study based on interviews with tourism entrepreneurs in Iceland.

The findings indicate that various tourism stakeholders have different approaches to growth, with many tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs tending to embrace degrowth practices by acting according to their value base, albeit sometimes unconsciously. This focus on aspects other than growth could potentially encourage tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs to contribute to sustainable development.

The examples discussed in this paper are locally limited and cannot be generalized due to the small size of the interviewed sample group. The scalability of individual entrepreneurs’ impact is limited due to their small size.

The actions and values applied by these tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs demonstrate how degrowth can be manifest on a small scale: growth is only embraced up to a certain limit, so it oes not exceed social and environmental capacities; from that point on, community well-being plays the key role. This study demonstrates the untapped knowledge tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs could provide to rethinking the tourism industry.

This study demonstrates the importance of shedding more light on ethical issues and values beyond growth in both academic and political discussions. Addressing tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs as smaller-scale actors of tourism degrowth could be a meaningful starting point for holistically rethinking tourism and give them a voice.

This research emphasizes untapped knowledge by acknowledging entrepreneurs and their potential for rethinking tourism development, concluding with recommendations for practice and policy.

This study aims to examine the factors of the vegan lifestyle on the travel experience. Special emphasis was placed on difficulties during travel and influencing factors for destination choice.

The vegan lifestyle has emerged as a growing market. The dietary reference is well-known, but the impact of the vegan lifestyle on tourism has received less attention. Earlier researchers have cited motivations of ethics, the environment and health as key. An online survey was conducted within the target group of vegans to provide more understanding of vegan tourism.

A few participants stated that they refused to visit countries due to too high meat consumption or due to long flight distances. Nature was named as the most decisive factor for choosing a travel destination among the respondents. Problems that might arise were mainly the general lack of awareness about veganism, as well as the confusion between vegetarianism and veganism in the destinations. Most respondents indicated that these problems were generally prepared for during the pre-planning process.

Research on vegan tourism is a relatively unexplored niche topic, the study used related topics adapted to a vegan tourism context.

Enhanced education about veganism among tourism service providers would be desirable to counteract such problems in the future and make the travel experience more carefree for vegans.

There has been little research in the field of vegan tourism, thus, this study provides valuable information on the needs and challenges of this growing market.

This study aims to examine how veganism is “seen” by young adult non-vegan consumers and how prevailing attitudes reinforce or challenge stigmas around veganism.

Photovoice methodology was used to explore young non-vegan consumers’ attitudes and beliefs towards veganism. Data was collected from students studying advertising at a major university in Australia, who produced images and narratives reflective of their own attitudes towards veganism. Polytextual thematic analysis of the resulting visual data was then undertaken to reveal the dominant themes underpinning participants’ attitudes. Participant narratives were then reviewed to confirm whether the ascribed meaning aligned with participants’ intended meaning.

Participant images were reflective of first, how they saw their world and their place within it, which showed the interplay and interconnectedness between humans, animals and nature, and second, how they saw vegans within this world, with both positive and negative attitudes expressed. Interestingly, vegans were simultaneously admired and condemned. By situating these attitudes along a spectrum of moral evaluation, bounded by stigmatisation and moral legitimacy, participants saw vegans as being either Radicals, Pretenders, Virtuous or Pragmatists. For veganism to become more widely accepted by non-vegans, there is an important role to be played by each vegan type.

This study offers a more nuanced understanding of how and why dissociative groups, such as vegans, become stigmatised, which has implications for messaging and marketing practices around veganism and associated products/services. Future research could use a similar methodology to understand why other minority groups in society are stereotyped and stigmatised, which has broader social implications.

Although wearable health-monitoring technology (WHMT) has become a stimulus for public health, women’s acceptance rate of this technology appears to be low. Thus, this study intends to investigate the factors affecting women’s adoption of WHMT.

The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology–2 model has been used in this study as a research framework that has been extended to include lifestyle and attitude. The proposed extended framework is validated using primary data (n = 314) collected from female respondents using a structured questionnaire; the partial least square-based structural equation modeling technique is subsequently used to test the proposed hypothesis.

The results show that effort expectancy, social influence, price value, habit, attitude and lifestyle have significant positive effects on women’s behavioral intention to use WHMT and accelerate actual usage behavior. Notably, effort expectancy and habit exhibit the largest impact on behavioral intention. However, performance expectancy, facilitating conditions and hedonic motivation are not significantly associated with behavioral intentions.

The findings of this study are important for healthcare practitioners and service providers to comprehensively understand the factors that affect women’s behavioral intentions in line with their actual usage behavior. This insight will help policymakers design viable strategies regarding WHMT to promote its sustainable usage in least developed countries.

This study contributes novelty by using an extended model that links women’s attitudes and lifestyles to their adoption of WHMT. This study also fills the gaps in the existing literature on women’s behavioral intentions in the context of WHMT by showing novel associations in the domain of WHMT uptake.

The aim of the research is to reveal information with regard to being a digital nomad as a family. Within this brief, the aim is to provide information regarding the reasons for choosing the digital nomad lifestyle of families, the female and male thoughts regarding the experience, destination selection factors and the difficulties and conveniences of digital nomadism for family aspects.

The data were obtained through a semi-structured interview questionnaire with a British digital nomad family, individually from the wife and husband, using a qualitative research design in the scope of the phenomenological research.

It was determined that having a better lifestyle, being willing to spend more time with family and traveling with them were the reasons for becoming a digital nomad. The opinions of the woman and man are in parallel. While the main features of being a digital nomad are freedom and flexibility, having time to spend with family is also important. Factors for choosing a destination as a nomad were access to nature, quality of life, cost of living, quality of the food, climate, proximity to other families who are nomads and interest in nonschool education. As a family, they meet their needs and wants, such as going to a local shop or staying in a rented house, but prefer to use restaurants and other facilities if their stay is short. Although having children motivates digital nomadism, it has been determined that families prefer to stay in a fixed place as nomads since it is not appropriate for children over a certain age to travel frequently.

The study provides detailed information regarding a family experience with digital nomadism through a case study.

This study aims to identify the role of consumer characteristics in cultural consumption tendencies. Additionally, the study examines whether country differences and prior experience in the country affect consumers' cultural consumption tendencies.

The effects of cosmopolitanism, consumer ethnocentrism, individual innovativeness, and lifestyle on cultural consumption tendencies were tested. Moreover, we assess whether country type and prior experience are differentiating factors for cultural consumption tendencies. To this end, two countries – the USA and South Korea, representing Western and Eastern cultures, respectively – were selected to achieve comparable results in two different cultures. The research data were collected from 775 people using an online survey method and analyzed using path analysis and an independent samples t-test.

Consumer characteristics affect cultural consumption tendencies. These effects are culture-specific and cultural product-specific. Cosmopolitanism has a positive impact on cultural consumption tendencies, while consumer ethnocentrism has a negative impact. Individual innovativeness and lifestyle partially affected cultural consumption tendencies. Notably, these effects differ by country type. However, cultural consumption tendencies do not differ according to consumers' prior experience.

This study provides insightful information for e-retailers to be mindful of global consumer characteristics. Accordingly, cultural consumption patterns can be used as the basis for market segmentation. In addition, understanding global consumer characteristics and their cultural product- and culture-specific effects on consumption will help cultural industry players in their segmentation and targeting decisions.

Notwithstanding the rich body of literature on cultural consumption, this study provides consumer-level comparative empirical research from a marketing perspective. Essentially, the study is novel as it reveals the consumer characteristics that affect cultural consumption tendencies.

This study aims to explore how factors such as working conditions, lifestyle choices and demographic characteristics may affect the mental health of industrial workers in Kuwait.

Within the scope of the study’s objective, the authors reached 400 industrial workers (228 male, 172 female) working in oil and gas organizations in Kuwait. An ordered logistic regression model was conducted to examine the effect of relevant independent variables on workers’ mental health.

Result indicated that employees with a lower education level (p-value = 0.015), employees who were smokers (p-value = 0.004) and employees with night shifts (p-value = 0.019), were more likely to experience mental health issues. Furthermore, result strongly highlights a higher chance of experiencing mental health problems among the workers who had longer working times (p-value = 0.000). On the other hand, having children (p-value = 0.042), visiting a mental health professional (p = 0.014) and living in a house with others (flat mate, family members, etc.) (p-value = 0.016) were statistically significant factors to improve employees’ mental health. Surprisingly, the authors’ research did not find a significant relationship between the mental health issues experienced by employees and their yearly income.

The paper lies in its exploration of the impact of working conditions, lifestyle choices and demographic factors on mental health of industrial workers using statistical approach. By applying ordered logistic regression, this study uncovers new insights into mental health of industrial workers.

Postpandemic efforts to rebuild have steered the global economy toward a more sustainable trajectory. It is imperative to acknowledge the pressing need for further enhancements in the sustainable development of the tourism industry. This study aims to examine the influence of personal factors, including environmental concern, cultural interest, travel lifestyle and involvement, on tourist satisfaction and revisit intention, using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as its framework.

The data was gathered through surveys conducted in three of Türkiye’s most famous slow travel destinations: Seferihisar, Gökçeada and Akyaka. The analysis was carried out using SPSS and SmartPLS software, with subsequent structural model testing.

This study presents an extended model that incorporates four individual factors, tourist satisfaction, TPB and revisit intention. All hypotheses have been rigorously tested, and the model accounts for 60.4% of the variance in revisit intention. The findings are comprehensively discussed in this article, supported by relevant theoretical frameworks.

Future research avenues could delve into the evolution of slow tourism in both developed and developing countries, assess disparities in revisit intentions between slow tourism and mass tourism destinations and investigate the prospects of sustainable tourism development in the postpandemic era.

The authors use the TPB to examine individual factors, tourist satisfaction and revisit intentions, aiming to build an extended model to gain a deeper understanding of the slow tourist decision-making process.

The primary objective of the current study is to unveil this relatively new phenomenon in the context of travel and tourism. In line with this purpose, the study provides a comprehensive overview of the concept of digital nomadism through a tourism perspective, discusses the relationship between digital nomadism, travel and tourism, examines the opportunities and threats of digital nomadism, and finally uncovers its transformative impact.

This conceptual study examined secondary data, i.e. existing literature. In this data, the focus has been on the tourism aspect of the digital nomad phenomenon.

The results suggest that digital nomadism introduces a novel perspective on the nature of travel and tourism mobility, along with a distinct tourist typology characterized by unique traits. Moreover, the results indicate that, while digital nomadism contributes to the local economy and cultural change on the one hand, it poses challenges in terms of regulations and taxation on the other. In this context, one can conclude that legislators should establish regulations for the employment of digital nomads, while managers should engage in activities that attract potential digital nomads on an international scale.

The study comprehensively reviews relevant literature in various ways, conducts a conceptualization of digital nomad tourists and makes a noteworthy theoretical contribution within the context of tourism. It addresses the gaps in the existing literature, particularly in specific contexts such as the legal status of digital nomads, taxation, prevention of gentrification, cultural exchanges, identity transformation and the impact on travel and tourism.

The aim of this article is to examine in depth the digital nomad lifestyle and its effects in the context of tourism and to create a perspective for the future by taking into account the findings of the articles in the thematic issue.

The theme question is examined through a review of the main findings and outcomes of this issue.

The digital nomad lifestyle stands out as an alternative form of tourism to traditional tourism models. Digital nomads are interested in cultural heritage and are effective in destination marketing just as social media influencers are. Gastronomic preferences and security perceptions of digital nomads play an important role in destination selection. Although digital nomads start out with a desire for independence and freedom, they want to come together with their peers in order to meet their social needs.

This article will serve as a significant resource for understanding the digital nomad lifestyle and for predicting future tourism trends.