Career Choice Goals: The Contribution of Vocational Interests, Contextual Support, and Contextual Barrier

Abstract

Based on social cognitive career theory (SCCT) (Lent & Brown, 2006; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994, 2000), this study empirically investigated the influences of vocational interests, environmental support, and barrier on career choice intentions to working in hospitality and tourism organizations among the fourth‐year undergraduate tourism and hospitality college (UTHC) students in Hainan Island of China. Three hundred and ten fourth‐year UTHC students from two institutions of tourism higher education on the island formed the sample group. Following SCCT theory, blocks of the vocational interests, contextual supports, and contextual barriers were, sequentially, entered into a hierarchical regression predicting the level of career choice goals. With the addition of each block, R² rose, significantly, from 0.354, to 0.386, and to 0.410 for the total sample. Also, briefly discussed are the study's findings as well as their implications from a tourism and hospitality human resources management perspective.

基于社会认知职业选择理论(简称“SCCT”理论)(Lent & Brown, 2006; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994, 2000)，本研究提出了大学生职业兴趣和环境支持与环境障碍对其职业选择目标的直接影响模型。然后，以中国海南岛两所高等院校310名旅游管理专业四年级本科生(简称“UTHC”学生)为例，对该模型进行了实证检验。在研究方法上，本研究采用层级多元回归分析法，依次将职业兴趣类、环境支持类和环境障碍类自变量进入回归模型建立线性回归方程，对职业选择目标(因变量)之变异的解释力指标R²分别显著性地从 35.4%，增加到38.64%，再增加到 41.0%。据此，SCCT 理论和本研究所提出的相应的研究假设，得到了支持性的验证。最后，本文就这些研究假设成立的原因以及上述研究发现对如何有效开发和管理好旅游业潜在的UTHC人力资源的问题，也进行了简要的探讨。

Keywords:

• Undergraduate tourism and hospitality college (UTHC) student
• career choice goal
• career interest
• contextual support
• contextual barrier
• Hainan
• 旅游管理专业本科生(简称“UTHC”)
• 职业选择目标
• 职业兴趣
• 环境支持与障碍
• 海南

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the research project of Hainan Provincial Educational Administration (Hj200741) and was supported in part by the National Science Fund of P. R. China under No. 70561001/G0110 and No. 70761002.