Porn fans as sex tourists? Broadening meanings of sexual consumption among adult entertainment expo attendees in Las Vegas, Nevada

ABSTRACT

This article centralizes the importance of studying touristic aspects of ‘porn cultures’ and expanding the meanings of ‘sex tourism’ to include porn culture. We do so by drawing from a survey of 481 individuals attending the 2009 Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, NV, USA. Using multivariate analyses and logistic regression, we examine how two dimensions of a relationship – relationship status (monogamous, open, or single) and travelling with your partner – affect attendees’ interests in engaging in sexualized activities outside the event: visiting a strip club, visiting a swingers club, meeting someone for sex, and paying someone for sex. Respondents who indicated they were in a non-traditional open relationship or simply not in a committed relationship were more likely to show interest in these activities. We conclude that fans’ sexualized consumption both inside and outside the expo highlights the intersections of porn and tourism.

KEYWORDS:

• Pornography
• sexual consumption
• monogamy
• sex industry
• sex tourism

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the organizers of the AEE for allowing them to complete this research. They also thank the team of surveyors for their assistance. Finally, many thanks to the reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments and guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority for statistics on who visits Las Vegas: http://www.lvcva.com/getfile/106/2010%20Vegas%20FAQs.pdf (accessed July, 2013). In 2010, Las Vegas hosted 37,335,436 visitors, with 18,004 conferences held.

2 For more on the history of Las Vegas and current popular accounts of Las Vegas, see Chung (2007), Moehring and Green (2005), Moehring (2000), Lax (2010), O'Brien (2010) and Ferrari and Ives (2005).

3 MANOVA results on all four sex-tourism activities: relationship status, F(8, 948) = 10.6, p < 0.001, Pillai’s trace = 0.164; and travelling companion, F(8, 948) = 2.88, p < 0.01, Pillai’s trace = 0.047.

4 The four sex-tourism activities show significant difference for relationship status: visiting a strip club, F(2, 478) = 5.05, p < 0.01; visiting a swingers club, F(2, 478) = 19.2, p < 0.001; meeting someone for sex, F(2, 478) = 48.0, p < 0.001; and paying someone for sex, F(2, 478) = 6.15, p < 0.01.

5 Significant difference in proportion based on travelling partner for visiting a swingers club, F(2, 478) = 5.91, p < 0.01, and meeting someone for sex, F(2, 478) = 4.78, p < 0.01.