Search results

This review aims to discuss concepts and theories from cognitive psychology, identifies tourism studies applying them and discusses key areas for future research. The paper aims to demonstrate the usefulness of cognitive psychology for understanding why tourists and particularly pleasure travellers demonstrate the behaviour they exhibit.

The paper reviews 165 papers from the cognitive psychology and literature regarding pleasure travel related to consciousness, mindfulness, flow, retrospection, prospection, attention, schema and memory, feelings and emotions. The papers are chosen to demonstrate the state of the art of the literature and provide guidance on how these concepts are vital for further research.

The paper demonstrates that research has favoured a behaviourist rather than cognitive approach to the study of hedonic travel. Cognitive psychology can help to understand the mental processes connecting perception of stimuli with behaviour. Numerous examples are provided: top-down and bottom-up attention processes help to understand advertising effectiveness, theories of consciousness and memory processes help to distinguish between lived and recalled experience, cognitive appraisal theory predicts the emotion elicited based on a small number of appraisal dimensions such as surprise and goals, knowledge of the mental organisation of autobiographical memory and schema support understanding of destination image formation and change and the effect of storytelling on decision-making, reconstructive bias in prospection or retrospection about a holiday inform the study of pleasurable experience. These findings indicate need for further cognitive psychology research in tourism generally and studies of holiday travel experiences.

This review is limited to cognitive psychology and excludes psychoanalytic studies.

Cognitive psychology provides insight into key areas of practical importance. In general, the use of a cognitive approach allows further understanding of leisure tourists’ behaviour. The concept of attention is vital to understand destination advertising effectiveness, biases in memory process help to understand visitor satisfaction and experience design and so on. Use of cognitive psychology theory will lead to better practical outcomes for tourists seeking pleasurable experiences and destination managers.

This is the first review that examines the application of concepts from cognitive psychology to the study of leisure tourism in particular. The concepts studied are also applicable to study of travellers generally.

Authenticity has been studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, leading to a rich but confused literature. This study, a review, aims to compare the psychology and sociology/tourism definitions of authenticity to clarify the concept. From a psychological perspective, authenticity is a mental appraisal of an object or experience as valued leading to feelings and summative judgements (such as satisfaction or perceived value). In objective authenticity, a person values the object due to belief in an expert’s opinion, constructive authenticity relies on socially constructed values, while existential authenticity is based on one’s self-identity. The resultant achievement of a valued goal, such as seeing a valued object, leads to feelings of pleasure. Sociological definitions are similar but based on different theoretical antecedent causes of constructed and existential authenticity. The paper further discusses the use of theory in tourism and the project to develop tourism as a discipline. This project is considered unlikely to be successful and in turn, as argued, it is more useful to apply theory from other disciplines in a multidisciplinary manner. The results emphasise that it is necessary for tourism researchers to understand the origins and development of the concepts they use and their various definitions.

This paper aims to provide a personal perspective on the application of psychological theory in tourism studies and the importance of cognitive science for future research.

Empirical findings and theoretical ideas from cognitive science provide insights useful for tourism researchers. The slow uptake of these ideas provides a means to probe systematic weaknesses in the tourism academy’s research practice.

Theories derived from psychology are applied in tourism research, but these same theories are not reassessed after they are discredited, and new approaches emerge. Instead, “old” ideas continue to be used resulting in a moribund theoretical environment. Further, concepts from different paradigms are often adopted in the same study resulting in a confused and confusing literature.

This paper challenges theoretically conservative “social science”-based tourism researchers to adopt current best practice ideas from cognitive psychology. It highlights the value of cognitive psychology and neuroscience research for understanding social science phenomena.

The ethical principles that potential tourism/hospitality employees bring to this industry have, only in the last decade or so, begun to receive research scrutiny. Fundamental ethical beliefs, it is suggested, are likely to have wideranging implications in regard to issues such as management style and workstress problem‐solving, particularly in the face of perceived indifference or injustice among prospective employers and supervisors. Ethical beliefs accompanying prospective employees are likely to be attended by expectations regarding the validity and efficacy of particular workstress problem‐solving strategies perceived to be displayed by tourism industry management. This study has examined four basic ethical principles that are at the core of optimal employee functioning: efficiency, reliability, Initiative and hardwork; the paper has also examined a range of perceived tourism industry management workstress response strategies among a sample of potential tourism industry employees, particularly as those perceptions may be mediated by basic workplace ethical beliefs. Major perceived workstress problem‐solving responses by tourism industry management were found to involve the enhancement of workplace trust, workplace communication, and global management change within the workplace. More highly rated ethical ideals involved showing initiative and responsibility, whereas lower rated ideals were efficiency and hardwork. It was also revealed that ideal ethical ratings for initiative, responsibility and efficiency were higher than perceived ethical expectations among tourism industry management; potential tourism industry employees rated hardwork lower than they believed tourism industry management would so do. The response of trust emerged as the most valued of the workstress alleviation responses, and was found to be associated with most of the ethical principles. The global management change response was also found to be associated with similar ethical principles, though to a lesser degree; the communication workstress response was also found to be a prominent management workstress response expectation, though was not revealed to be predictive of the four workplace ethical principles. Implications of these findings for human resource management operations within the tourism/hospitality industry, and for further research directions, are presented.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between tourists’ motivation, experience, perceived value and revisit intentions to creative tourism destinations. The ever-growing concept of creativity has been introduced into the tourism field. Creative tourism has been viewed as a strategy to regenerate destinations physically, culturally and socially. To develop tourism products and provide services that integrate the concept of creativity to satisfy tourists’ needs by developing a more active and long-lasting form of experience, this study aims to examine tourist consumption psychology in the context of creative tourism destinations. Past studies have identified motivation, perceived value and experience as three major antecedents affecting tourists’ revisit intentions.

The empirical study was carried out in three popular creative tourism spots, Meinong, Shuili and Yingge, located, respectively, in the north, middle and south Taiwan. These creative tourism sites provide pottery, crafts, arts, workshops and other creative activities that integrate authentic local culture to engage tourists with fulfilling and meaningful experiences. The on-site survey was conducted on both weekdays and weekends during March 2012. Self-administrated questionnaires were distributed to participants who were systematically selected at the main gate of the study areas. In total, 417 questionnaires were collected.

The results indicated that on-site tourism experience was the most influential antecedent of revisit intention to creative tourism sites in terms of the magnitude of the standardized coefficient. The unique variances of motivation factors and perceived value were too small to be statistically significant to explain revisit intentions. The present study contributes to the ever-increasing tendency for creative industries in Taiwan to develop creative tourism products and services that encompass authentic local culture and art in enhancing tourist experience.

For business operators, this study suggests that if owners of creative destinations would like to attract repeat tourists, the tourists’ experiences are surely critical in developing service blueprints to meet the needs and wants of customers; they should pay more attention to understanding what tourists experience when they visit creative tourism attractions.

This article shows that the development of cultural tourism offers the opportunity to learn more about each other. Moreover, it demonstrates the specific and purposeful use of the existing cultural resources. In order to avoid a purely touristic view, which would be damaging to the preservation of cultural heritage, it is necessary to analyze the specific characteristics of society and its locations. The understanding of local culture is imperative for the planning and development of cultural tourism. The products of tourism have to be adapted, on a high quality level, to the local cultural needs. This article emphasizes how to promote sustainable development in cultural tourism.

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.

During the pandemic, two types of fear were identified that occur significantly in all groups or profiles of people. The aim of this paper is to determine which of the two types of fears exist in certain psychological groups, and which of the fears strongly influence the decision to travel.

The VALS 2 method and standardized questionnaire were used for the segmentation of the tourist market or for the determination of the psychographic profiles of the consumers, and three additional questions were joined to it as they were vital for the research of the type of fear and its impact on the decision for traveling. When the reliability of the questionnaire and the validity of the sample were determined, the data were further processed using a computer program package IMB AMOS SPSS 21.00, and then, based on the theoretical suppositions and hypotheses, the SEM structural model was created.

The paper indicates the existence of established types of fears in humans, when it comes to pandemics and similar crisis situations. People are most afraid of infection during travel, and lack of funds and job loss during the critical period of the pandemic. The research conducted confirms that all groups of people, who are determined by the psychological technique VALS 2, react with a certain dose of fear and make decisions under the pressure of fears.

The research had limitations in terms of contact with people and conducting live surveys. The measures during the pandemic, which were carried out by the state, included social distance and limited movement of people.

The work can contribute to the community, along with similar research. The results of the research will be available, and it will be possible to see the behavior of people during crisis situations, and the impact of fears on making decisions, both travel decisions and decisions related to other areas of life.

The paper provides research results on a large sample of respondents, and can serve as a basis for further research in the field of tourism, psychology and similar fields. It is crucial to consider the type of fears, and the strength of the impact of these fears on the decision to travel, during crisis situations.