TOURISM
PETER ROBINSON
MICHAEL LÜCK
STEPHEN L. J. SMITH
17
Tourism Research
Learning Objectives
•
To appreciate fundamental approaches to doing
research on tourism
•
To understand key concepts relevant to doing
research
•
To describe the nature of research questions
•
To understand different styles of research
•
To discuss the nature of ‘theory’ in tourism
research
Nature of Tourism
Research
• Tourism planning, development and
marketing depend on good data and
analysis
• Decisions should be based on evidence
– May be either empirical (numerical or
independently verifiable) or subjective (not
independently verifiable)
• Fundamentally: research is about asking
and answering questions
Research Versus
Management Questions
• Management questions
– Usually multifaceted and complex
– May involve personalities, institutional or
regulatory challenges, or politics
– Often evolves as a result of trying to solve it
– May not be solvable through research
– Solution may depend on budgets, tact,
courage, ability/diplomacy of manager,
compromise
Research Versus
Management Questions
• Research questions
– Must be answerable – not philosophical or
political ruminations
– Tend to be more focused than management
questions
– Answer is evidence-based
– Answers based on data and analysis – not
personality of researcher
General Approaches to
Research
• Management research: improve
management activities such as
marketing or operations
– Often undertaken or commissioned by a
business
• Planning research: future-oriented,
acquiring information to develop some
project
– Done by both public and private sectors
General Approaches to
Research
• Policy research: supports the development
of tourism policy and government priorities
– Potential scope of public policy research is quite
wide
• Social science research: a search for
deeper understanding of some
phenomenon
– Typically undertaken by a academics
– Examines tourism from a wide range of
perspectives, such as a form of human
behaviour or as a social phenomenon
Paradigms
• Set of assumptions about the nature of
reality and how individuals perceive reality
– Epistemology: how we know what we know
• The relationship between the researcher and the
subject
– Ontology: the nature of being or reality of the
phenomenon studied
– Methodology: the methods or tools used to
answer a research question
• Empirical
• Subjective
Empirical Research
• Usually based on numbers for coding
and typically some form of statistical
analysis
• Logic is explicit and can be replicated
• Often involves hypothesis-testing
– The articulation of a possible relationship
among variables
– Statistical tests are then used to assess
whether the hypothesis appears valid
Subjective Research
• Usually based on words, thoughts, or
images
– Assumes people interpret experiences in
highly personal terms
• Also includes ‘content analysis’ –
researcher interpreting documents,
photographs, other records
• Cannot be independently verified
Types of Tourism Research
• ‘Pure’ research: done solely to
increase knowledge
• Applied or action research: done to
solve a practical problem; initiated by
researcher
• Consultancy research: commissioned
by a client to solve his/her problem
Types of Tourism Research
• Workplace research: form of action
research done internally by an
employee(s) of a firm
• Delay research: a management tactic
using ‘need for research’ to delay
making a decision
Functions of Research
• Description: provides information on
what exists
• Explanation: generates insights into
cause-and-effect relationships
• Prediction: forecasts likely outcome of
a course of action (or inaction)
The Nature of ‘Theory’
• A familiar word used many different
ways
• Types of ‘theory’
– Theory of the first type: traditional, natural
science-type theory; only one theory
accepted as valid; produces testable
hypotheses
– Theory of the second type: similar to first
type, but competing theories may exist;
common in social sciences
The Nature of ‘Theory’
• More types of ‘theory’
– Theory of the third type: label applied to
results of statistical testing
– Theory of the fourth type:
untested/untestable verbal or graphic
model
– Theory of the fifth type: epistemology
presented as ‘theory’
– Theory of the sixth type: ‘grounded theory’
– Theory of the seventh type: ‘theory’ used
without any special meaning
Phases of a Research Project
• Set goals
• Review related literature
• Develop research design (data
collection and analysis methods)
• Analysis
• Articulate conclusions
• Publish/report findings