02-07-2024
Individuals are concerned about the impression that others have on them. Thus, they routinely engage in self-presentations that perform different social characters in front of relevant audiences. In particular, many urban residents are currently suffering from serious pressure of impression management in their daily social interactions, from workplace to leisure time. Such pressure has been regarded as a cause of various wellness problems of urban residents that may have negative effects on their work efficiency, morale and even life quality.
Tourism has been regarded as a way to relieve people’s everyday social stress by creating an environment that help tourists mentally detach from routines and feel more relaxed than recreation only in their usual environments. Building on this assumption, studies that examine the effect of tourism experience on individuals’ wellness are extensive. However, the psychological mechanism underlying the process is still under debate. Not all the evidence supports that tourism experience leads to better wellness or lower social stress. Therefore, this research is distinct from the existing literature in two ways. First, introducing the concept of self-presentational concern and combining the dramaturgical sociology, this research attempts to provide an alternative explanation on tourists’ social wellness change between home and destination environments. Second, based on the context of rural vs. urban tourism, this research attempts to reveal how and why tourism helps relieve urban residents’ social pressure based on environmental psychology.
This research identifies that (1) the destination environment is perceived by tourists as the back stage of social life where their self-presentational concerns are lower than in the home environment; (2) compared with urban destinations, rural destinations have a stronger effect on urban residents’ self-presentational concerns; (3) the effect of rural destination environment weakens, and the effect of urban destination environment intensifies when urban residents stay longer at their destinations. By relieving urban residents’ daily self-presentational concerns, rural or urban tourism destinations may benefit their social wellness by helping them get rid of the overwhelming burden of impression management. Our findings also indicate that relief of individuals’ self-presentational concerns can be attributed to variance of socio-physical environments.
The findings provide fruitful insight to both tourism industries that try to attract more urban residents to rural destinations and policymakers that target wellness improvement of urban residents. In terms of rural tourism marketing, rural destinations may be rebranded in a way that targets urban residents seeking a relief from their daily self-presentational concerns. For example, the “Honest-to-Goodness” marketing campaign of the Indiana State that positions the state as a place of “authentic experience” and “genuine people” corroborates this idea. The campaign appeals to the needs for a simple social environment and a genuine interaction with others. If this campaign succeeds, it may evolve into a paradigm for other destination marketers who want to incorporate the element of self-presentational concerns into their brand identities. Specifically, to attract urban residents struggling with peer pressure at home, rural destinations can highlight its simple social environment and the opportunity to disconnect with urban routines
In the same vein, companies can encourage their employees to engage in rural tourism activities that could relieve their daily self-presentational concerns. Incorporating rural tourism into employees’ benefit packages may be one way to address some wellness problems at workplace. Noticeably, since the effect of rural and urban tourism destination environments become similar when tourists stay long enough at the destination, it is suggested that the length of rural tourism should be controlled. Moreover, another research of the authors shows that lower self-presentational concern in the destination environment may lead to change of diet behavior on vacation. Hence, the relevancy of tourism activities to healthy diet is critical to tourists’ wellness improvement and policy makers should pay attention to local dining facilities.
Tourism has been seen as a way to relieve people's social stress, but the psychological mechanism underlying the process is still under debate. This research attempts to provide an alternative explanation on tourists' social wellness change between home and destination environments. The research identifies that the destination environment is perceived by tourists as the back stage of social life. By relieving urban residents' daily self-presentational concerns, rural or urban tourism destinations may benefit their social wellness. The findings provide insight to both tourism industry and policy makers that target wellness improvement of urban residents.
Relieving self-presentational concerns in rural tourism, Annals of Tourism Research, 74, 56-67. Qiu, S. C., Cai, L., Lehto, X., Huang, Z. J., Gordon, S., & Gartner, W. (2019).
Liping Cai is a professor in Purdue’s White Lodging-J.W. Marriott, Jr. School of Hospitality and Tourism Management and director of the Purdue Tourism and Hospitality Research Center
