Travel in your way or in my way? Resolution of conflict between young adult children and their parents during family vacation decision-making

Abstract

In light of the prevalence of travel conflict between young adult children and their parents, it is critical to examine how conflict can be effectively resolved. A mixed-methods approach was adopted in this study, which used interviews and three experiments to examine how young adult children resolve conflict with their parents and what factors affect their conflict resolution. The results have the following implications. 1) Two main styles of conflict resolution are used by young adult children, namely 'doing what I want' (i.e., self-assertion, persuasion) and 'doing as parents expect' (i.e., self-sacrifice, compliance). 2) The conflict attribution of young adult children affects their selection of resolution styles. 3) The main effect of conflict attribution of young adult children on their resolution styles is mediated by their perspective taking and moderated by their decision-making power. This paper provides guidance to practitioners on how to manage conflicts in family travel decision-making.

Adult children traveling with parents: exploring travel conflict and parents’ subjective well-being

“…This study focuses on the adult children traveling with parents, expanding the research object from nuclear family to the extended family and broadening the research scope of family travel. Although a few scholars have focused on adult children traveling with parents (Jia et al , 2022; Wang et al , 2018; Yang et al , 2020a), such family travel have received far less research attention when compared to young children’s family travel (Li et al , 2017a) and couple travel (Park et al , 2020). The decision-making power of family travel varies at different stages of the family life cycle (Hesse-Biber and Williamson, 1984; Jia et al , 2022).…”

“…Although a few scholars have focused on adult children traveling with parents (Jia et al , 2022; Wang et al , 2018; Yang et al , 2020a), such family travel have received far less research attention when compared to young children’s family travel (Li et al , 2017a) and couple travel (Park et al , 2020). The decision-making power of family travel varies at different stages of the family life cycle (Hesse-Biber and Williamson, 1984; Jia et al , 2022). Although young children (ages 0–18) have their own ideas, they have relatively little influence on the overall decision-making (Wang et al , 2004).…”

“…Although young children (ages 0–18) have their own ideas, they have relatively little influence on the overall decision-making (Wang et al , 2004). Furthermore, although elderly parents are more dependent on their adult children in their lives due to language barriers, inability to book online and lack of travel experience during the trip (Xiong et al , 2021), they have a sense of independence and are less dependent on their adult children of needs, preferences and consumption values than young children (Jia et al , 2022). Therefore, travel conflicts with adult children and their impact on the travel experience of the elderly are important issues that need to be paid attention to in family travel research.…”

“…As a common social phenomenon in the era of mass tourism, family travel has received academic attention since the 1970s (Jenkins, 1978). Family travel is a time that spent together by family members that is different from their daily routines and full of joy and bliss, but it may also involve contradictions and conflicts (Jia et al , 2022; Yao et al , 2020). Notably, there are obvious differences in family structure between Eastern and Western cultures, which leads to various types of family travel (Lehto et al , 2017).…”

“…In recent years, studies on adult children traveling with parents are scattered in the aspects of travel motivation (Wang et al , 2018), decision-making (Yang et al , 2020a), benefits (Miyakawa and Oguchi, 2022) and conflicts (Jia et al , 2022; Yao et al , 2020). Under the influence of Confucianism and filial piety culture, adult children treat traveling with their parents as a way to show filial piety (Fu et al , 2019).…”