Tourist socio-cultural aversions: A holistic conceptual framework

Exploring tourist’s socio-cultural aversions, self-congruity bias, attitudes and willingness to participate in indigenous tourism

“…Edwards and Smith (2014) noted that no opinion responses could represent ambivalence and social desirability bias. Extant tourism studies also proposed the potential impact of ambivalence and social desirability bias on Indigenous tourism (Espinosa Abascal et al, 2015; Fan et al, 2020b; Holder & Ruhanen, 2017; Hunter, 2011; Ruhanen et al, 2015b) and intergroup biases (Chien & Ritchie, 2018; Holder et al, 2021; Kock et al, 2019a; 2019b; Stepchenkova et al, 2020). King and Bruner (2000) further explain that sensitive contexts can lead to contradicting results due to self-deceptive positivity or the tendency to appear unbiased and favourable by under-reporting or falsely reporting true feelings.…”

“…According to Hogg et al (2009, p. 153), an aversion involves the psychological or physical action of turning away from something. Holder et al (2021) established a conceptual framework that provides a comprehensive delineation and differentiation on the interplay of the multiplicity of socio-cultural aversions in tourism. More specifically, they christened the concept of socio-cultural aversion defined as avoidance associated with an ingrained dislike for, and distancing from, a tourism product, experience, or interconnected system of consumerism, representative of a particular social or cultural group’s identity (implicit or explicit; assumed or real) (Holder et al, 2021, p. 443) .…”

“…Holder et al (2021) established a conceptual framework that provides a comprehensive delineation and differentiation on the interplay of the multiplicity of socio-cultural aversions in tourism. More specifically, they christened the concept of socio-cultural aversion defined as avoidance associated with an ingrained dislike for, and distancing from, a tourism product, experience, or interconnected system of consumerism, representative of a particular social or cultural group’s identity (implicit or explicit; assumed or real) (Holder et al, 2021, p. 443) . They note benefits to investigating multiple aversions in various forms such as implicit/explicit, passive/aggressive or temporal is essential to fully understand the potential implications towards tourist appeal and demand.…”

“…Research exploring the impacts of socio-cultural aversions and attitudes in tourism is limited, particularly within the context of Indigenous tourism. To understand the relatively low appeal of Indigenous tourism more fully, consideration of socio-cultural aversions is needed (Holder et al, 2021). Indeed, research seeking to explain a phenomenon with an absence or inconsideration of context can be problematic (Veal, 2017).…”

“…Socio-cultural aversions can exist subconsciously or consciously and can result in negative perceptual, affective or behavioural responses (Holder et al, 2021). In tourism, existing studies have explored tourist xenophobia (Kock et al, 2019a), tourist racism (Dillette et al, 2018; Li et al, 2020) and self-congruence in a tourism context (Ekinci et al, 2013; Sirgy & Su, 2000).…”