TOURISMPETER ROBINSON MICHAEL LÜCK STEPHEN L. J. SMITH

Tourism Research17

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

• 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

Nature of Tourism Research

• 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

Research Versus Management Questions

• 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

General Approaches to Research

• 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

Paradigms

• 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

Empirical 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

Subjective 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

Types of Tourism 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)

Functions of Research

• 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

The Nature of ‘Theory’

• Set goals• Review related literature• Develop research design (data

collection and analysis methods)• Analysis• Articulate conclusions• Publish/report findings

Phases of a Research Project