Philip L. Pearce

• D Phil ( Oxford)
• Professor at James Cook University

Host-tourist interaction is a core attraction of ethnic tourism. Yet both parties may confront challenges in such interactions because of different cultural backgrounds. This study aims to investigate host-tourist interaction issues in Vietnam's Central Highlands by adopting a qualitative approach wherein 31 semi-structured interviews were conducte...

Tourism researchers and practitioners have an interest in understanding tourists' travel patterns, and one of the most used models applied to reach this goal is the seminal Travel Career Pattern (TCP) model. However, repeat tourism is underexplored and in the present research, the authors provide an initial investigation of repeat tourists using th...

Contradictions and complexities in the study of tourist scams can potentially be overcome by developing a more organised taxonomic account of these essentially deceptive activities. Using a key-informant survey of 78 strategically selected stakeholders and a multidimensional scaling analysis, we discovered four dominant features to classify tourist...

Tourists frequently engage in visiting a sequence of cities, sites, and destinations. Previous psychology studies have shown the impact of order on recall and favorability; key concepts are the serial position effect and primacy and recency influences. A field-based natural experiment collected posttrip responses from 179 international tourists to...

Travel vlogs are popular, but how audiences get involved while watching remains unclear. This study explored audience involvement along with expressions of travel intention. A systematic sampling procedure was developed, filtering 132 ‘highly involving sessions’ from 25 videos in Bilibili, a Chinese video-sharing platform. Qualitative analyses were...

This study explores the use of destination mascots in tourism development. It steps away from the traditional investigation of yuru kyara by focusing on a wider range of anthropomorphic messengers. By mapping the historical trajectory of mascots, the researchers isolate a special subcategory of anthropomorphic characters: destination mascots. Desti...

The perception of digital-free tourism for developing character strengths was explored. A golden evidence triangle fusing the views of three respondent groups was established to assess trustworthy digital-free tourism-character strength linkages. Nine strengths were commonly acknowledged. They were distributed across a three-layer tiered model acco...

Grey nomads, an Australian term for older recreation vehicle travellers, are bound together by a set of common characteristics. This chapter initially identifies a number of issues associated with successful ageing; this discussion provides a somewhat novel perspective on the group’s commonalities and mobility. Next, and as a basis for providing in...

Abstract – Children are silent agents in tourism, although they are intelligent and skilled enough to be part of the research agenda. In the past, children were ignored as passive, unreliable and incompetent informants, but this view has now faded. There are three principal reasons for including children in tourism research. As active and talented...

Holiday camping and time spent in outdoor environments are critical childhood experiences. This study aims to identify the outcomes and processes underlying children's experiences of holiday camping. The researchers use the contextual model of learning as the theoretical background underpinning the study. Chinese children who left their families an...

The timelines of planning theory and the approaches to tourism planning are compared from the early twentieth century to the present. The researchers address two specific questions; what are the links between these two timelines and what are the contributions to tourism planning knowledge? Unlike general planning theory, a distinctive business and...

The main aim of this study was to examine the content of the travel blogs of millennial female Muslim travellers and understand the meanings and directives in such writing. The theoretical framework of critical media discourse analysis was used to frame the study, while Leximancer and content analysis were used to analyse data. Key results extended...

The key aims of the study were to document and analyze contemporary restaurant practices germane to meeting dietary requirements in significant tourist cities. Social practice theory informed the study. Detailed coding of menu information and TripAdvisor sources for 60 restaurants in six strategically selected tourist cities provided the bases for...

Close analysis of the user-based difficulties with tourism technology are infrequent. The present autoethnographic account of strategically selected cases seeks firstly, to understand tourist technology user difficulties and secondly, to develop managerial directions for maintaining quality holiday experiences. Four strategically selected cases wer...

This paper addresses the question of how contemporary visitors perceive the more commercial facets of religious destinations. The Four Great Buddhist Mountains of China provided subtly different contexts for the work, but the themes addressed have a broad applicability to the tensions between secular and spiritual features of such sites. Two rounds...

Much of the existing literature on the tourism-humour relationship focuses on the perceptions of tourists. Little research exists on the views of tourism operators. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the perceptions of tourism operators when deliberately including humour into interactions with customers. The research is based on thre...

The central interest in this study is to develop and position the humour repertoire concept for tourism and leisure research. The term humour repertoire encompasses the totality of a person’s abilities and skills to both appreciate and produce humour. Such skills include the individual’s humorous (travel) stories, jokes from their life and travels,...

This study has conducted two rounds of interviews at the Four Great Buddhist Mountains (FGBMs) in China mainland to explore spiritual values and relevant influencing factors of religious visitors. The results analysis has categorized seven themes of spiritual values. It reflected that visitors were trying to seek a balanced life status through main...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to build on both the theoretical work concerning the co-creation of experiences, and the need for micro-businesses to adopt a consumer-friendly orientation. The researchers examined the compatibility of vendors’ views of their visitors’ perspectives and the visitors’ own assessments of two Hong Kong night market...

Activities of paranormal interest occur in many international destinations, but few empirical studies exist that would benefit the management of such sites. Bali, Indonesia and Udon Thani, Thailand are selected as examples to highlight the development potential of paranormal tourism in Southeast Asia. The study aims to explore tourism stakeholders'...

Purpose This paper aims to outline major theoretical concepts relating to the tourism-humour relationship and provide commentary on opportunities for further research in this area. Design/methodology/approach Papers for this perspective research were sourced by conducting a systematic review which critically appraised relevant research on this top...

Purpose Over the past 75 years, and even before that time span, some tourists have been identified as behaving destructively, unsafely and unsustainably. Such behaviours disturb other tourists, cost communities, reduce business profitability and impair life across the planet (Gössling, 2018). The attempts to reduce these negative consequences have...

This study explores how humour in tourism can communicate facets of national identity. In particular, the paper focuses on the presentation by guides of two English and two Scottish castles. Drawing on multiple sources, including an analysis of promotional materials, the text of the guide’s narratives, on-site observation, and TripAdvisor comments...

The influence of visiting Buddhist heritage sites on happiness is the core concern of this article. China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains provided the setting for the study. Sixty semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine the positive effects of Buddhism on visitors. Thematic analysis was first undertaken to understand the Buddhism-indu...

Academic researchers were provided with an additional forum to exchange knowledge, research and agendas on the critical study of urban tourism and tourism cities with the emergence of the International Journal of Tourism Cities in 2015. Its Theme editors were invited to provide their insights on future research agendas in urban tourism research. Th...

The current research investigates the rewarding outcomes from restricted digital connectivity or its absence in tourism contexts. Sixty-five carefully selected key informants with relevant background experience or specialised knowledge reported on their experience, observations and perspectives about digital-free tourism (DFT). A grounded theory ap...

The dramatic increase in the number of Chinese outbound tourists has sometimes generated negative media reports about their 'uncivilised' behaviour. The academic literature has only partially analysed such behaviour and its impacts on Chinese tourists in terms of their group identity. Building on the recognition of the interactive and interdependen...

In this study the ideas and approaches of human ethology are applied to the topic of individual tourists posing for a photograph at iconic tourism sites. The emphasis in the study is on tourists’ postures and, using both researcher collected examples and internet materials, the work outlines an original category scheme for the kinds of poses observ...

In today’s society, with the aging population, the satisfaction of the elderly people is highly connected with the social sustainability. This article used the data of the Chinese Health and the Pension Follow-up Survey from CHARLS in 2013 to analyze the relation between the elderly people’s satisfaction and their living arrangement. Based on the c...

This study examines Chinese adult children's holiday travel with their parents as a unique type of family travel. A netnographic examination of 158 detailed online blogs was conducted to explore the adult children's motivations for taking such travels. The results of the netnographic study revealed that the motivations for traveling with their pare...

Digital-free tourism (DFT) describes tourism spaces where internet and mobile signals are either absent or digital technology usage is controlled. By employing critical discourse analysis of over 450 media texts produced between 2009 and 2017, the study reported the conceptual understanding of DFT, the ways the media representation has changed over...

Paranormal tourism is one of the new forms of special interest tourism. It is defined by tourists' interests in topics which challenge realist ontologies and representational epistemologies. The aims of this study were to outline the facets of tourists' experiences when visiting key sites of paranormal interest in Bali, Indonesia. The work also ass...

In Verona, Italy, one site attracts global tourist interest: the courtyard and balcony made famous in Shakespeare’s tragic play Romeo and Juliet. There is a collision of fact and fantasy in declaring this site to be the one in the famous play. More importantly, the contemporary space labeled as Juliet’s balcony is a commercial tourism hub, attracti...

This study contributes to an understanding of how young citizens in developing tourist areas view and welcome tourists and tourism. The work is embedded in and builds on the conceptual and theoretical traditions of the tourist gaze and intercultural contact literature. The work was conducted in Lhasa, Tibet, and explored the views and preferences o...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the order in which a set of cities are visited to ascertain the effects of position on group tourists’ recall and evaluations. Design/methodology/approach Using a questionnaire, the views of highly experienced tour guides were analysed to provide preliminary insights about the like...

Indonesian Muslim tourists represent a large and potentially very significant segment of the Asian travel market. Perhaps surprisingly, their motives for taking leisure holidays have not been systematically addressed in the academic literature. Building on conceptual work in tourist motivation, and specifically the travel career pattern approach, t...

Tourists' green behavior has recently attracted much academic interest. The majority of the existing studies use quantitative research methods and explore how tourists' cognitive and emotional factors influence their environmental actions. This study assesses tourists' green behavior from a unique perspective, that is, how hosts at rural Chinese B&...

There appears to be an increase in the number of tourism publications focusing on humour. These new directions explore theoretical and conceptual ideas. The cumulative value of these studies suggests that employing humour in such situations as tour guiding and attractions facilitates positive memorable tourists' experiences and is good for the succ...

This study emphasizes the intersection of two topics: the breaks or gaps in the life trajectory of Chinese citizens which may facilitate travel behaviour, and the analysis of forces which may constrain this activity. To understand the future possibilities for Chinese gap time tourism, the present survey expands on Wu, Pearce, Huang, and Fan’s [(201...

Commercial activities exist at different religious sites and the practices arouse global concern. This study identifies and assesses religious commercial activities and explores how they affect tourists' attitudes. The well-known Four Great Buddhist Mountains in China were selected as research sites. Using grounded theory, this study initially cond...

Indonesia and Malaysia have a combined population of ~225 million Muslims. Little academic work has been conducted on their motives for nonpilgrimage, leisure-based travel. Building on the travel career pattern approach for assessing tourist motivation, the this study sought to uncover the motivational patterns of Muslim tourists in this part of So...

The study adopts an exacting observational approach to vandalism and its site determinants in two pivotal Asian cities, Bangkok and Singapore. The study served three goals: to develop and evaluate an observational approach to auditing the damage to tourist attractions; to link the setting characteristics to the indicators of damage; and to explore...

This study seeks to assess the factors influencing the satisfaction of Chinese tourists when they undertake self-drive international vacations. There are few existing studies about this independent travel market. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken to gather initial views about the attributes contributing to self-drive satisfaction. A questi...

The aim of this study is to explore the role of local and bule scholars (an Indonesian term for a white foreigner) in contributing to the international literature on tourism research about Indonesia. The conceptual underpinning of the study lies in the contemporary adaptation of Lewin’s force field theory for understanding behaviour. The researcher...

Seasonal migration is an emerging trend among seniors in China. In comparison with the lifestyle-oriented migrations of seniors in much of the western world, Chinese seniors often travel with a focus on improving their health and longevity. Adapting the concept of a therapeutic landscape, the changes experienced by seniors with health problems who...

Narrative communities consist of closely interacting participants who frequently discuss their views of the world. The aims of this study were to establish the credibility of using a narrative community approach to the recreational vehicle (RV) market and, if appropriate, both identify common themes in the public discourse and direct attention to s...

Purpose This study aims to assess international customers’ experiences in the leading hotels of the iconic city of Shanghai. Design/methodology/approach Leximancer, a qualitative analysis software program, was used to examine over 2,000 reviews appraising Shanghai’s superior hotels. The reviews were posted on Agoda.com. Findings Overall, the i...

The application of tourism laws to advance the well-being of stakeholders is of broad interest to many countries attempting to shape the rapid rise of the sector. In China, the first Tourism Law came into effect on 1 October 2013. The 112-article law includes various measures to address issues such as unfair competition. Adopting a social represent...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the applicability of older methodologies to contemporary city tourism research. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews and identifies categories of methodologies for new uses. Findings Four methods are considered to advance the toolkit of city tourism researchers – two are projective techniqu...

Despite tourism being recognised as a promising growth sector in many Small Island Developing States (SIDS), its contribution to community wellbeing has been neglected. The current study is set within the context of tourism development in a SIDS and examines the positive and negative outcomes of enclave tourism to community wellbeing in Mauritius....

The topic of modifying settings and service delivery to enhance consumers' experiences is a potentially distinctive component of tourism hospitality and events education. Nevertheless, educators in these interest areas are faced with a challenging task. The challenge is one of delivering a signature set of learning opportunities which empower gradu...

This book considers visitor management (VM) as a component of destination management at all levels of a destination and involving a wide range of stakeholders. It aims to demonstrate current knowledge on VM and to provide insights into conceptual issues rather than providing merely descriptive case studies. This book is primarily aimed at postgradu...

This chapter considers Chinese tourists' learning and skill acquisition through travel and contemplates these outcomes as insights for proving advice to those designing tourist experiences. A three-part classification is employed to document the self-reported learning of mainland Chinese tourists derived from blog, interview, and questionnaire data...

Significant heritage buildings in Europe, and most especially cathedrals and churches in Western Europe, are sites of considerable international tourism appeal. A developing analytical approach termed the orchestra model of experience was used to structure the collection of empirical data about Chinese tourists' reactions to major cathedral sites i...

This chapter explores the modern phenomenon of Japanese tourists visiting anime-related places abroad. While similarities to film-induced tourism exist, anime-linked locations require tourists to use their imagination and permit a special interplay among the sites, fantasy, and cultural values. To examine the phenomenon, samples of popular anime ti...

This introductory chapter defines and notes the development of tourism out of Asia as a new force in global human communication. The complexities and some efficiencies in defining Asia are reviewed. The chapter considers dispersal patterns from a number of Asian countries and notes the chief destinations as provided by current statistical counts. K...

This chapter explores the cultural interest and needs of Thai group tourists undertaking specific tours. The perspectives of a specialist Thai tour operator in choosing routes and conducting tours for these tourists in Europe provide the basis for the points identified. The special appeal of themes linked to Thai life is emphasized. The development...

The final chapter of this volume seeks to interpret and explain key dimensions of Asian outbound tourism. Initially the challenge of employing culturally sensitive theoretical lenses is tackled. Cautious and at times sceptical assessments of the mobilities paradigm, critical pragamatism and specific micro approaches are offered. A selection of key...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify dominant scams against domestic tourists in popular tourism cities in China. There are two questions of concern: what types of scams do domestic tourists experience and are the patterns of scams different between the capital and regional cities? The social situation framework was employed to interpre...

Halal tourism, a term widely used as a synonym for Muslim travel, refers to products, leisure, recreation and social purposes that comply with Islamic teaching. This study considers the needs of this increasingly large travel market. Existing studies repeatedly emphasise the needs for Halal food, Halal restaurants, religious practices, and Halal co...

The approaches to tourism development vary in different settings. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the conversation on the relative economic advantages of enclave and agritourism in a small island context. This study explicitly discusses these two forms of tourism in the island of Mauritius where tourism is a key pillar of the local ec...

Senior tourists are key figures in the world's drive tourism market. This study focusses on the 'Grey Nomads' in Australia, the core aim being to understand the tourists' motivations patterns for attending recreational vehicle (RV) rallies. At a typical RV rally in a key regional destination, 170 questionnaire-based surveys were collected. Building...

This study develops a small but growing cadre of work seeking to reveal how humour is used in tourism. It focuses on the presentation of three sites in southern England where guides use humour to enhance the presentation of the country’s distinctive history. The study has two aims: to understand how tourists react to the guides’ humour and, second,...

This study explores young hosts’ identification of tourism resources and their perceptions of different tourism site management styles in a suburban village in Lhasa, Tibet. Two tourism parks with different management styles co-exist in the same village. One is collectively owned and managed by the community and the other is developed and managed b...

Building on the existing tourism–humour literature, the study investigated tourists’ views of the categories of humour used by Australian tour guides. The researchers also evaluated tourists’ responses to the experimental manipulation of humour levels. The tourists’ commentary on the settings revealed that guides in one business emphasised predomin...

The present study uses accessible online and emic material as a window to approach the assessment of tourists’ experiences at a small themed tourist attraction. The research adopts the approach of seeing experiences as an orchestrated model of interacting elements that are linked to expressive and instrumental components. The study then seeks to id...

It is the purpose of this review to record some of the highlights of the Australian contribution to the global flow of ideas in tourist behaviour research. The context for appreciating the contribution is formulated by recognising the fusion culture of Australian life which effectively provides a meeting ground for ideas from other continents. Four...

In this study of domestic hotels in Thailand, a timeline approach was used to build a cumulative set of insights. Using archival analysis, the study initially traces the development of the domestic hotel in Thailand by exploring hotel sector growth in Thailand from 1962 to 2012. Building on these insights, the perspectives of key stakeholders towar...

Entertainment is a feature of some tourism settings and acts as a key pull factor for visiting certain destinations. Research-based studies about entertainment and the tourist experience are, however, rather limited. This study pursued this research opportunity and explored international tourists’ experiences in an iconic performance-based entertai...

The present study seeks to explore and compare the perceived importance of Pine and Gilmore’s experience realms and Schmitt’s categorisations of experience in a tourism context. These approaches to experiences are chosen because they are widely cited, yet rarely compared. The empirical component of the work is based on Chinese tourists who were ask...

In the last decade, the way tourists use communication technology has become a strong focus of tourism research. Nevertheless there are some locations where there is limited or no internet technology access. These locations can be labeled dead zones. The aims of the present research focus on how tourists think about and react to situations where th...

This research explored the perceptions of on-site international tourists towards the smog in Beijing. A scale measuring the degree of tourists' concern about smog conditions was developed. The links among smog concern, risk perception, trip satisfaction and destination loyalty were tested with a structural equation model. Direct relationships were...

Awareness of behaviors which cause offence represents a pathway to promoting better civic conduct by tourists. Recent tensions in Hong Kong have highlighted some problematic behaviors of Mainland Chinese tourists. The study was conducted in Macao and systematically compared the perceptions of the levels of annoyance of 40 troublesome behaviors. The...

Building on the under-utilized power of case studies, this conceptual review considers information to enhance Asian tourism sites and attractions. Soft infrastructure, defined as the total effect of the hospitality, interpretive and person-to-person encounters, was considered at 16 strategically selected locations drawn from 7 Asian countries. An e...

Building on the theory of social representations, and some new lines of work asserting the importance of mundane components of the tourist experience, the aims of the study are to categorise and interpret Chinese tourists’ online visual representations of an Australian iconic landscape: the Great Ocean Road. Over 10,000 pictures posted online were...

Considerable efforts are underway to understand the behaviours of the growing number of outbound Chinese tourists. Existing research has shown that this market is complex, and an awareness of regional differences, change within China, and sensitivity to other world views are needed to guide studies in this area. For western researchers, several puz...

The origins of tourism and the foundations of tourism scholarship are in the temperate zones of the globe. While tropical destinations and themes have not been ignored in tourism study, a closer focus on the commonalities of tropical tourism settings is warranted. The defining common physical and social features of tropical locations include climat...

The study of tourists' reactions towards those with whom they interact on holiday is a niche area of tourism study with its own short history. Attitudes are a widely used construct in this kind of tourism research. This paper examines closely the way tourism researchers have viewed attitudes. In particular, it is argued that by often reducing attit...

Scholars approaching the issue of defining key terms should be wary of relying too heavily on etymological definitions (Warburton 1996). The terms of interest often shift meaning over time and assume new and subtle forms. Nevertheless, the derivation of a concept, particularly a generic and abstract concept such as entertainment, can occasionally b...

As areas and topics of tourism study grow with increasing researcher efforts, it is opportune at times to pause and reflect on the directions of the work already undertaken. As a part of the Special Issue of Tourism Recreation Research, this article takes a fresh look at backpacking, backpackers and the research pertaining to these topics. The fram...