Theoretical innovation in Asia Pacific tourism research

Abstract

This paper identifies some pervasive limitations of tourism research and some particular difficulties confronting its development in the Asia Pacific region. It raises the issues of status and respect in fields of academic inquiry and adopts a position that those seeking to create a mature discipline of tourism studies built wholly on a positivist tradition may be misleading their Asian Pacific colleagues. It also suggests that conceptual schemes rather than theories are a promising level of integrative effort and that heuristics to stimulate conceptual creativity can be useful. In particular it argues that by combining cultural insights and elements from the communities of Asia with guidelines for creative model and scheme building, Asia Pacific tourism researchers could find new directions and heighten the originality and hence the global interest in their work.

Keywords:

• theory
• conceptual schemes
• innovation
• cultural comparisons
• positivism
• academic status
• intentionality