engleski

Tourism - a driver of social change?

Introduction: Since a birth of modern tourism, opinion leaders of all sorts have advocated travel. It is widely held even today that travel broadens one’s horizons, breaks down stereotypes, reduces prejudice and bigotry and leads to a better understanding between people of different countries, race or religions thus contributing to building a foundation for a peaceful world. In a more recent time, when the very survival of our civilisation is questioned as we face multiple and prolonged crises (economic, social, environmental), this view of a tourism as a social force able to change people was widened to include a value-change necessary for our collective survival into 21st century. However, as the former proposition of tourism being an agent of world peace was contested strongly by scholars in a face of inconclusive research evidence, so the proponents of tourism as a great social force nexus still lack a robust evidence to support their theories. The aim of the research reported in this paper was to test the proposition by capturing the power of past and present travel experience to transform individual travellers and their values. Methods: With specific aims to ascertain if travel experience leads to value transformation, a quantitative survey of international travellers residing in four countries (UK, Germany, Hungary and Croatia) was conducted. An on-line web panel was used as a data collection method. A questionnaire consisted of several parts – trip characteristics, personal values, travel experience and socio-economic information – through a combination of close and open-ended question. The initial sample size was 2, 000 respondents in total (600 in Germany, 600 in UK, 400 in Hungary, and 400 in Croatia). Use of stratified quota samples regarding region, gender, age and level of education in each country assured the representativeness of the obtained samples on the country level. Respondents have been randomly selected in each strata. Results: The theoretical departure point was that people typically change when faced with a critical event or turning point and that travel experiences provide such opportunities. Indeed, slightly more than every second respondents (53%) stated she/he experienced some ‘turning point’ during her/his lifetime. Among those experienced the ‘turning points’ during her/his lifetime, 29% attribute that experience to travel and description of these experiences show a wide array of change, ranging from personal growth (i.e. self-esteem) to social engagements (i.e. turn to activism, develop pro-environmental attitudes). Conclusions and limitation: The research provides some indication that travel is conducive to individual value change, as those claiming change demonstrated high commitment to environmental sustainability, valued more self-direction, universalism, benevolence than power, conformity and security and were less materialistic. However, due to the methodological limitations of the quantitative approach, the challenge of future qualitative research design is to devise a framework that will address all the possible plausable explanations.

travel experience, world values, value transformation, survey, trip characteristics

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