Two Case Studies Exploring the Nature of the Tourist's Experience

Abstract

reconstructions of two U.S. tourists who visited Britain were used to explore the utility of Kelly's Personal Construct Theory (PCT) for better understanding the nature of tourists' experiences. Data were gathered from five structured interviews with each respondent, spaced over an eight month period. series of four repertory grids were developed with each respondent, aided by the PLANET software package. These were used to identify shifts in attributable to the vacation. Results from the testing of four hypotheses indicated the extent to which each individual's vacation could be described as experience.KEYWORDS: Personal Construct Theory, tourist experience, phenomenologyIntroduction At the level of an individual tourist, the primary goals of a leisure trip or vacation are likely to be experiential. Although, by definition, goals will be sought through travel outside the home environment, this geographical dimension is merely the mechanism through which experiential goals are met. experiential dimension of leisure and tourism trips has not been widely explored. Most analyses of tourists' experiences appearing in the literature are based upon Clawson and Knetsch's (1966) model of the recreation experience. This model involves five more or less distinct and yet interacting phases: (1) An anticipation phase, (2) travel to the site, (3) on-site activity, (4) return travel, and (5) a recollection phase. For example, Hammitt (1980) provided an empirical test of this model by measuring changes of mood amongst participants on an educational/recreational field trip. He produced weak evidence which supported the five-stage model. model has also served as a conceptual framework for studies concerned with the role of perception in recreation (Mercer, 1971), and environmental psychology in tourism (Fridgen, 1984). This geographical operationalization implicitly fits the mechanistic model of the person which predominates in the tourism literature and was caricatured in the type of tourist behavior graphically described by Boorstin (1962).The study reported here considers a very different model of the person stemming from the work of Kelly (1955), who viewed each individual as a personal scientist. It represented an attempt to explore the ability of Kelly's Personal Construct Theory (PCT) for better conceptualizing and understanding the nature of tourists' experiences. Any research that takes its inspiration from Kelly's theory requires the application of particular methods in order to be consistent with the ontology and epistemology that flows from his philosophical position. This article demonstrates these methods in an application of Kelly's general theory to the specific case of tourists' experiences.Since the publication of Kelly's work, a relatively small but dedicated international community of psychologists, clinicians and therapists, and social scientists have continued to apply and elaborate on Personal Construct Psychology (PCP). Kelly's work has been shown to have influenced leading proponents of existential (Soffer, 1990), humanistic (Epting & Leitner, 1992) and cognitive (Warren, 1990, 1991) psychology.Kelly's basic psychological premise is encapsulated in the fundamental postulate of his theory which states, A person's processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates (Kelly, 1955, p. 46). Kelly states his philosophy in these terms: The universe is existing and is gradually coming to understand it (p. 6). For Kelly, is a prototype scientist continually seeking prediction of his world. Kelly's man acts through a structured network which leads towards the future and equips him or her to anticipate real events:Essentially, construct theory posits that the sine qua non of human existence is our tendency to attribute unique meanings to the data of our experience. These meanings, termed personal constructs serve not only as interpretation of past events but also as hypotheses about events yet to be encountered. …