Mitigating Aggressive Small Trade at Tourist Destinations Through Cognitive Restructuring

ABSTRACT

The goal of the article was to use established theories of individual, organizational, and community learning to hypothesize ways tourism leaders could facilitate their small independent traders that harass visitors’ unlearning of aggressive selling behaviors. Nine hypotheses were posited. For example by tourism leaders: placing greater emphasis on traders’ engagement in the desired nonaggressive selling behaviors than on stopping their engagement in aggressive ones; not supporting traders’ engagement in aggressive selling behaviors but instead openly supporting their engagement in nonaggressive trading; and taking steps to strengthen the traders’ role in their community’s tourism sector. The discussion has implications for how small traders’ selling behaviors are managed at tourist destinations.

KEYWORDS:

• Learning
• selling
• tourist harassment
• unlearning
• visitor harassment