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The relationship between sex and tourism remains ambiguous in the tourism literature. Few studies have examined the underlying motivations behind sex-driven travel, and little is known about factors inhibiting tourists' procurement of commercial sex when traveling. Therefore, this study explored male Chinese tourists' perceived constraints during decision-making and developed a comprehensive scale to assess constraints to commercial sex consumption overseas.

Data were obtained from male Chinese tourists purchasing commercial sex while traveling overseas. This study involved a four-stage process as recommended by Churchill (1979) for scale development research. In Stage 1, preliminary items were generated through a comprehensive review of the constraints literature and in-depth interviews with 16 sex tourists, which generated an initial 26 items. During the second stage to purify the measurement items, six items were eliminated, resulting in 20 items. Stage 3 involved exploratory factor analysis (N = 275) to extract the scale's underlying factor structure. Results revealed a five-factor structure with sufficient evidence of internal reliability given Cronbach's alpha coefficients between 0.722 and 0.843. The final stage included confirmatory factor analysis (N = 259) to verify the scale's reliability and validity.

Ultimately, 20 items were developed to measure sex tourists' perceived constraints toward engaging in commercial sex services overseas based on five factors: structural constraints, intrapersonal constraints, interpersonal constraints, value conflicts and service supply–related constraints.

This study advances the scope of sex tourism research by verifying how these five constraints are independent, generalized and can influence the procurement of sexual services overseas. This study is the first in sex tourism research to explore the difficulties facing sex tourists. Results offer marketers important insight on how to better address these constraints while providing a safe and legal sex tourism experience.

Local adaptations to economic blight and overreliance on the tourism industry demonstrate significant aspects of resilience and risk among Caribbean populations. Those individuals who choose sex tourism as a way to benefit from its increasing revenue demonstrate resilience through their adaptations to shifts in the local and national economies, including national debt, expansion of the all-inclusive hotel industry, and seasonal variations in tourist arrivals. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Negril, Jamaica, I argue that the very activities of “hustling” and sex work that illustrate local men’s resilience are the same practices that put their sexual health at risk.

This research contextualizes the practice of female sex tourism using the anthropology of tourism, gender and sexuality studies, and the anthropology of HIV/AIDS with a focus on the Caribbean region. This work is based on a project that entailed nine months of fieldwork in 2010–2011 in Negril where I conducted ethnographic observations, life history interviews with three men who sell sex, and 54 semi-structured interviews.

Men who sell sex to women tourists demonstrate resilience in the face of economic shifts and changing cultural norms. These men are also, however, exposed to risk through their sexual activities and health seeking behaviors.

In order for the issues of STI/HIV risk to be adequately addressed among this population, effective public health efforts must prioritize health over tourism revenue and utilize anthropological approaches to explore the health costs of the tourist dollar.

Historically, sex, tourism, and the labor market have long been inextricably linked, but media concerns about sex as the main purpose of tourism, and its effects on the host group and its sex workers, date from the mid-1990s, in the wake of the spread of HIV, the collapse of communism, the rise of the Internet, and the increasing influence of NGOs concerned with women's and children's welfare. This chapter argues that in order to understand fully the relationship between tourism, sex, and the labor market, we need to adopt a broader perspective and look at the various intersections between the three factors, and how they blend into and influence each other. It conceptualizes the three domains of tourism, sex, and work as intersecting circles and analyzes the forms of activity typical of each. “Sex tourism,” as popularly defined, is the space where all three overlap, but there are significant areas of sexual activity associated with tourism that are not commercial, and yet that generate significant and increasing business activity in some destinations. There is also a tendency for partners in commercial sex to define their relationships in terms of other sectors, as “love” or “romance.” The chapter concludes that with economic development, there is a tendency for roles in the sex industry to become increasingly professionalized and differentiated, and that as the industry is unlikely to disappear, regulation should focus on the empowerment and welfare of sex workers rather than abolition and suppression.

This paper aims to contribute to sex tourism literature by placing it into a contemporary context of globalisation, harm reduction and disease migration.

The paper takes a public health and social science approach to map sex tourism, drawing on sex worker and tourist situations alongside global forces including technology, human rights, law enforcement and health.

A new, holistic conceptual model is presented, containing interacting, multi level associations. Whilst the separate micro, contextual, meso and macro levels are versatile, decision makers and practitioners will be equipped to understand sex tourism in its entirety.

The paper’s originality is found in the proposed conceptual model.

全球化、减害和疾病迁移时代的性旅游：一种新的概念模型

该论文采用公共卫生和社会科学方法, 利用性工作者和旅游者的情况以及包括技术、人权、执法和健康在内的全球力量, 分析了性旅游的状况。

本文将性旅游文献置于全球化、减少危害和疾病迁移的当代背景下, 为性旅游文献做出了贡献。

本文提出了一个新的、整体的概念模型, 包含相互作用的多层次关联。虽然单独的微观、背景、中观和宏观层面是多变的, 但决策者和从业者将可以全面的了解性旅游。

该论文的独创性体现在提出的概念模型中。

El turismo sexual en la era de la globalización, la reducción de daños y la migración de enfermedades: un nuevo modelo conceptual

Este artículo contribuye a la literatura sobre el turismo sexual situándolo en el contexto contemporáneo de la globalización, la reducción de daños y la migración de enfermedades.

El documento adopta un enfoque de salud pública y ciencias sociales para delimitar el turismo sexual, basándose en las situaciones de los trabajadores del sexo y los turistas junto con las fuerzas globales, como la tecnología, los derechos humanos, la aplicación de la ley y la salud.

Se presenta un nuevo modelo conceptual holístico que contiene asociaciones interactivas de varios niveles. Mientras que los niveles micro, contextual, meso y macro separados son versátiles, los responsables de la toma de decisiones y los profesionales estarán equipados para entender el turismo sexual en su totalidad.

La originalidad del artículo se encuentra en el modelo conceptual propuesto.

Investigación

This cutting-edge short commentary is intended to raise awareness of sex trafficking in the tourism and hospitality industry. The purpose of this paper is to also advocate for further research to identify and hopefully prevent sex trafficking in related settings.

This paper provides a descriptive overview of the current knowledge base on sex trafficking in tourism and hospitality. Based on gaps in the literature, future research agendas and directions are suggested.

Academic research on sex trafficking in tourism and hospitality remains limited. More scholarly attention is needed to this matter. The tourism industry is directly and indirectly associated with sex trafficking (e.g. hotel accommodations and direct consumption of sexual services, such as through sex tourism). Despite legislative efforts by international government agencies to eradicate sex trafficking, the problem remains pervasive. Broader practice- and research-based intervention efforts are needed.

This short commentary advocates for tourism and hospitality researchers to make practical and theoretical industry contributions that may help prevent sex trafficking.

This paper is a part of a series of papers seeking insight into a holistic perspective into the lives, experiences and vulnerabilities of male-to-female transgender persons (from here on referred to as “transgender persons”/“Ladyboys”) within the sex industry in Southeast Asia. “Ladyboy” in Thai context specifically refers to the cultural subgroup, rather than the person’s gender identity and is not seen as an offensive term. Among the minimal studies that have been conducted, the majority have focused on sexual health and the likelihood of contracting or spreading HIV/AIDS, while often ignoring the possibility of other vulnerabilities. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The study interviews 60 transgender persons working within red light areas of Bangkok. The final research instrument was a questionnaire of 11 sub-themes, containing both multiple choice and open-ended questions.

This study found that 81 percent of participants had entered the sex industry due to financial necessity. There was also a high vulnerability among transgender sex workers to physical and sexual violence. This includes nearly a quarter (24 percent) who cite being forced to have sex and 26 percent who cite physical assault within the last 12 months.

These findings can aid the development of programs and social services that address the needs of ladyboys, looking beyond gender expression and social identity to meet needs and vulnerabilities that often go overlooked.

This survey provides deeper understanding of the vulnerability of transgender sex workers, including their trajectory into sex work and potential alternatives.

This paper aims to offer a critical review of the existing research on the relationships between tourism and male homosexual identities and, based on a sociocultural perspective, suggestions for specific directions in future research.

The analysis is based on a review of the literature that focuses on two independent yet intersecting topics: tourism and homosexuality and identity formation processes.

Specific directions for future research are offered regarding the role that tourism plays in homosexual identity development. The proposed paths for future research include the tangible contributions of tourism to the stages of homosexual tourists’ identity development and the (re)construction, negotiation and globalisation of homosexual and queer identities through tourists’ cultural interactions. Two further suggested directions are the significance of tourism for non-Western homosexual tourists and tourism’s impacts on local homosexual identities.

This study is based solely on the existing literature on male homosexuality and mostly on studies published in English.

The research included a critical analysis of the commonly assumed significance of tourism in homosexual identity formation. The results provide directions for future empirical research and calls for a solid theoretical foundation that allows researchers to demonstrate, understand and explain how tourism contributes to gay and queer identities.

Based on a case study of a small community in Thailand, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the explanations that child prostitutes give for selling sex. It looks at whether child prostitution can be considered as a form of labour and if children themselves understand what they do as work or exploitation. It focuses on children's relationships within their families and argues that international legislation calling for child prostitution to be abolished, while well meaning, is too simplistic and does not deal with the complex social relations underpinning prostitution and the lack of alternatives for many children.

This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation among a small group of child prostitutes in Thailand.

Certain children have very different understandings of prostitution to those campaigning to end the practice. They do not see prostitution as a form of work or necessarily as a form of abuse. Instead they claim it as a way of fulfilling perceived social and moral obligations to their families.

The importance of listening to children themselves, even on such sensitive and emotive issues, is paramount as it reveals a gap between ground level realities and proposals put forward in international legislation.

The growing literature on child prostitution rarely takes into account children's own perspectives. This paper engages directly with children and takes seriously their own justifications and rationalisations.

George Ritzer (2010) recently conceptualized globalization in terms of liquidity and, especially, flows. This conceptualization is largely rooted in Zygmunt Bauman's theory of a world dominated by increasing liquidity. However, neither Bauman nor Ritzer put these ideas in the context of their intellectual genealogy. This essay seeks to do that by reviewing the surprisingly rich history of thought pertaining to these ideas, especially flows. Through this review we also hope to call attention to some long-debated philosophical questions that inform how a theory of flows (and structures) can be applied to our contemporary globalized world.

Using a qualitative approach, this cross-disciplinary study integrating modern slavery, tourism and marketing expertise outlines Chinese outbound tourists' perceptions of and reactions to issues related to child sex tourism.

In total, 27 in-depth interviews were conducted, and data were analysed. Manual coding was chosen as an efficient method to process qualitative interview data given the relatively small sample size in this study.

Three main themes emerged from analysis: (1) tourists' negative perceptions of child sex tourism; (2) tourist boycotts against child sex tourism destinations and activities as reactions to this socially deviant and illegal phenomenon and (3) tourist advocacy to enhance public awareness of child sex tourism. These themes suggest that tourists, as key tourism stakeholders, have difficulty accepting that child sex tourism occurs and would like to identify solutions to end illegal activities. Tourist boycotts would positively affect sustainable tourism development by eliminating illegal businesses, including those involving child prostitution, from the tourism industry. The qualitative method is applied here to develop a conceptual framework explaining tourists' perceptions of and reactions to child sex tourism.

A conceptual framework of Chinese individuals' perceptions of and reactions to child sex tourism has been devised using a qualitative approach. Although this framework takes child sex tourism as its focus, it can also be applied to better understand tourists' perspectives of other socially deviant or illegal behaviours within the tourism industry. The findings of this study provide valuable implications for various tourism stakeholders.

The current study makes significant theoretical and practical contributions to an under-researched topic – child sex tourism. A conceptual framework of Chinese individuals' perceptions of and reactions to child sex tourism has been devised using a qualitative approach. Findings from this study may inspire campaigns to protect children from being drawn into sex tourism. Efforts should also be undertaken to rescue children who have already been victimised by illegal businesses.