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People have unconscious motives which affects their decision-making and associated behavior. The paper describes a study using thematic apperception test (TAT) to measure how unconscious motives influence travelers' interpretations and preferences toward alternative tours and hotels. Using the TAT, the present study explores the relationships between three unconscious needs: (1) achievement, (2) affiliation, and (3) power and preferences for four package tours (adventure, culture, business, and escape tours) and for seven hotel identities (quality, familiarity, location, price, friendliness, food and beverage, and cleanliness and aesthetics). The present study conducts canonical correlation analyses to examine the relationships between unconscious needs and preferences for package tours and hotel identities using data from 467 university students. The study scores 2,438 stories according to the TAT manual to identify unconscious needs. The findings indicate that (1) people with a high need for affiliation prefer an experience based on cultural values and hotels that are conveniently located, (2) individuals with a high need for power indicate a preference for high prices and good value for their money, and (3) people with a high need for achievement prefer a travel experience with adventure as a motivation. The study findings are consistent with previous research of McClelland (1990), Wilson (2002), and Woodside et al. (2008) in exploring impacts of the unconscious levels of human need.

Mandatory auditor firm rotation (mandatory rotation) has been a controversial issue in the United States for many decades. Mandatory rotation has been considered at various times as a means of improving auditor independence. For example, in the United States, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has considered mandatory rotation as a solution to the independence problem (PCAOB, 2011) and the European Parliament approved legislation that will require mandatory rotation in the near future (Council of European Union, 2014). The concept of implementing a mandatory rotation policy has been encouraged by some constituents of audited financial statements and rejected by other constituents of audited financial statements. Although there are apparent pros and cons of such a policy, the developmental process of such a policy in this country has not necessarily been an open-democratic, objective process. Universal mandatory rotation may or may not be the ideal solution; however, an open-democratic, objective process is needed to facilitate the development of a solution that considers the needs of all major stakeholders of audited financial statements – not simply accounting firms and public companies, but also investors. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine key issues relating to mandatory rotation and to encourage and stimulate future research and ongoing dialogue regarding this issue, in spite of efforts by certain constituents to silence the issue. This paper provides an overview of the various reasons, including practical, theoretical, political, and self-motivated reasons, why a mandatory rotation policy has not been implemented in the United States in order to address the potential conflict of interest between the auditor and client. This paper will also discuss how some deliberations of mandatory rotation have been flawed. The paper concludes with a summary of key issues along with two approaches for regulators, policy makers, and academics to consider as ways to improve the process and address auditor independence. The authors are not advocating for any specific solution; however, we are advocating for a more objective, unified approach and for the dialogue regarding auditor rotation to continue.

Pressing sustainability issues face the 21st century, as identified by the Millennium Development Goals and its post initiatives, and ethical principles related to fairness, equity, and justice are increasingly important to address climate change and resource scarcities. Yet, such ethical dimensions remain surprisingly little addressed in the tourism literature. Ecofeminist critique offers insights into this gap, identifying historical antecedents in patriarchal, Enlightenment-driven discourses of science where positivistic approaches facilitate the control and use of nature and women. This chapter draws from this critique to propose a preliminary, justice-oriented framework to resituate sustainable tourism within an embodied paradigm that covers intangibles such as emotions, feelings, and an ethic of care.

The purpose of this chapter is to propose a theory which may lead to a holistic description of the mechanism of touristic phenomena. In so doing, the central discussion is to provide descriptive answers to basic questions. It will not be a sociological or anthropological discourse. Instead, it will use perspectives from environmental psychology, genetics, and a theory of information energy in elementary particle physics. The study of tourism, though it is not a distinct disciplinary field, must provide a grand theory. In this chapter, the discussions mainly focus on the concept of tourist to provide several ideas to amend its definition, which may directly correspond to an overall view of touristic phenomena.

This chapter offers a new sustainability-oriented paradigm for cultural and heritage tourism studies: an integrated approach to heritage tourism and heritage conservation based on resilience. Its extensive literature review examines resilience in a range of disciplinary areas, including heritage conservation and tourism studies. An important aim is to “make visible” often neglected parameters in the interactions among social, cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions of heritage conservation and tourism. Within the broader concept of resilience, “cultural resilience” was identified as a crucial bridge between conservation and tourism. The study argues that resilience in general and its cultural forms in particular offer a potentially valuable framework vital for an integrated approach between the two in the common pursuit to manage change and uncertainty in cultural and heritage destinations. The chapter concludes with directions for further development of sustainability-oriented paradigm studies.

This chapter engages cosmopolitan and feminist paradigms of knowledge production through their shared ethics of social justice, equality, and diversity, promoting integration into an emerging postdisciplinary focus on embodied cosmopolitanism(s) as a promising way forward in tourism studies. Cosmopolitan paradigms theorize the dialectics of cultural diversity and universal rights, while feminist cosmopolitanism focuses on gender and sexuality equality and difference within this intersection. An embodied approach combines work on “the body” and “situated embodiment” with the cosmopolitan to embrace all human differences and acknowledge that the researchers’ own embodied cosmopolitanism affects research questions, ethics, and praxis toward transformation in research communities and the academy.

This chapter introduces a metaphor—the house—and applies Habermas’ philosophy to examine the environment where knowledge production takes place. The analysis shows the dominance of “the systemic paradigm,” which is characterized by increased bureaucratization and commercialization. This paradigm has severe consequences for two core features of universities: the open-ended search for deeper understanding and the principle of autonomy. The chapter advances the idea of reclaiming the political dimension of the epistemic endeavor and presents a series of initiatives which help to advance tourism scholarship by non-conforming to the steering conditions of this paradigm and instead reclaiming the personal and subjective; promoting multiple knowledges; and building alternative platforms of knowledge production, cooperation, and dissemination.

The proceedings of the 17 editions of the conference of the Spanish Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism constitute a valuable archival resource within the research on Spanish tourism. But so far their contents have not been analyzed. The aim of this chapter is to examine the research that has been presented at its conference by means of a bibliometric analysis of the proceedings of 17 editions. The study focuses on the origin of the research (countries, regions, institutions, and authors), as well as its characteristics in terms of themes dealt with, geographical areas researched, methodologies, disciplinary areas, and attitudes toward tourism. Implications for the evolution of the research are discussed in terms of knowledge contributions and the shaping of major tourism research traditions.