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Different but Similar: Social Comparison of Travel Motives Among Tourists
Author(s) -
Doran Rouven,
Larsen Svein,
Wolff Katharina
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
international journal of tourism research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.155
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1522-1970
pISSN - 1099-2340
DOI - 10.1002/jtr.2023
Subject(s) - tourism , individualism , perspective (graphical) , psychology , social psychology , marketing , sociology , advertising , business , political science , artificial intelligence , computer science , law
Although previous research suggests that people prefer to think of themselves as being authentic (or individualistic) travellers rather than stereotyped tourists, there have been few studies investigating the external validity of such claim. This paper addresses this research gap by investigating tendencies to dissociate the self from typical tourists in terms of travel motivation. Findings suggest that people perceive their own travel motives to be different from those who they perceive as typical tourists and that these tendencies generalize across people involved in different forms of tourism. This paper discusses the results from a social psychological perspective and provides implications for future research and destination management alike. © 2014 The Authors. International Journal of Tourism Research published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.