Tourism and health: using positive psychology principles to maximise participants’ wellbeing outcomes – a design concept for charity challenge tourism

Abstract

This conceptual paper explores the use of psychology, especially positive psychology, to inform the design of travel experiences for a specific health outcome À enhanced participant wellbeing or mental health. It extends the concept of sustainable tourism as a tool for local, regional and societal improvement. Mental health is a growing issue in many developed countries: 30% of Australians report depressive symptoms, with implications for social sustainability. The paper reviews how positive psychology seeks to combine hedonic, eudemonic and social wellbeing into the integrated concept of "flourishing", creating positive emotions, engagement, and meaning. It uses the charity challenge model to explore tourism experiences that enhance participant wellbeing. Charity challenges are participatory, group travel events combined with extended physical activity, awareness-raising, and fund-raising for charity. These events inherently combine recognised pathways to wellbeing, e.g. being active, doing something meaningful, giving, and connecting with others. Other principles from positive psychology, such as intentional and volitional activity, goal attainment, activation of signature strengths, experiencing positive emotions/gratification, and capitalisation on positive experiences, can be incorporated into the event design to foster wellbeing outcomes. The paper suggests how this design might take shape, as well as management implications and further research questions.

Positive psychology and tourism: a systematic literature review

“…(Filep, 2014b); (Jenkins & Romanos, 2014); (Kruger, Saayman, & Ellis, 2014); (Lee, Kruger, Whang, Uysal, & Sirgy, 2014); (Moscardo, 2014). Coghlan, 2015); (Kim, Lee, Uysal, Kim, & Ahn, 2015); (Mnguni & Giampiccoli, 2015); (Morgan, Pritchard, & Sedgley, 2015); (Tuohino & Honkanen, 2015); (Willis, 2015).…”

“…(Coghlan, 2015) Australia "This conceptual paper explores the use of psychology, especially positive psychology, to inform the design of travel experiences for a specific health outcome -enhanced participant wellbeing or mental health" (p. 382).…”

“…A well-conceived travel experience is crucial for the development of a sustainable tourism strategy (Coghlan, 2015). Tourism can gain a lot from social sciences' endeavors (Bramwell, 2015).…”

Economic Value of Parks via Human Mental Health: An Analytical Framework

“…Improvements derived from recreation and tourism have received particular attention (Kühnel and Sonnentag, 2011;Dolnicar et al, 2012;Chen and Petrick, 2013;Bimonte and Faralla, 2015;Coghlan, 2015;Zuo et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2016;Uysal et al, 2016). Mental health improvements are commonly coupled with physical and physiological gains (Pretty et al, 2005(Pretty et al, , 2007Hughes et al, 2013;Astell-Burt et al, 2014;Haluza et al, 2014); but few studies to date have distinguished these mechanisms experimentally (Mitchell, 2013;Pasanen et al, 2014;Sandifer et al, 2015).…”

Review of Optimism, Creativity, and Spirituality in Tourism Research

“…Positive Psychology tries to apprehend the positive, adaptive, creative and emotional enjoyable characteristics of human behavior (Coghlan, 2015). Its use in tourism can lead to better tourists' experiences, develop feelings for destinations, accept them as a special place in their hearts and promote psychological satisfaction leading to happiness and well-being growth (Dan, 2015).…”