Effects of post-trip eudaimonic reflections on affect, self-transcendence and philanthropy

ABSTRACT

Recently, tourism scholars have recognized that travel can create transformation, including (1) personal benefits such as improved wellbeing and personal growth and (2) societal benefits such as increased open-mindedness and more positive pro-environmental attitudes, motivations, and behaviors. Expanding and integrating this research, this experimental study tests whether travel experiences, with eudaimonic elements of self-discovery and a sense of meaning, lead to these benefits and tests a proposed process where these experiences influence personal changes that subsequently create societal benefits. Specifically, using an online MTurk sample (n = 481) with a broad range of recent vacation experiences, we test whether (1) post-trip self-reflection on eudaimonic travel experiences (2) creates affective responses (3) that lead to self-transcendent changes and (4) subsequent post-trip philanthropy among recent travelers. Results of structural equation modeling indicate that philanthropic effects of travel were initiated by the eudaimonic self-reflections via eudaimonic affect and self-transcendent outcomes. This study contributes to the research linking eudaimonia and travel and provides insights into the ways that the travel industry can be harnessed as a potent tool for promoting personal meaning, self-transcendence, and prosocial outcomes.

摘要

近来，很多旅游方面的学者已经意识到旅游可以在很多方面产生变化， 其中包括（1）个人方面的好处，例如幸福感和个人的成长不断的改善；（2）社会方面的好处，例如越来越开明的思想，保护环境方面越来越积极的态度，推动力和行为。在融合了这些研究的基础上，本实验性研究进行了拓展，对自我发现和意义感这样富有生活意义因素的旅行经历是否能够产生上述变化进行了检测；同时，本文还检测了这些旅行经历对个人变化的影响到最终产生社会方面积极影响的这一假设过程。 特别是本文采用了拥有大量近期度假经历的网络MTurk样本（481）。我们检验了（1）旅行结束后的对于生活意义方面的旅行经历的自我反思 （2）是否会产生情感方面的反应（3）这些情感方面的反应会产生自我超越能力上的变化 （4）并且最终在旅游者中产生旅行结束后的博爱效应。结构方程模型的结果显示，具有生活意义的自我思考可以通过具有生活意义的情感和自我超越的成果产生旅行的博爱效应。本文推动了生活意义幸福感和旅行之间关系的研究，对于可以利用旅游产业推动个人意义，自我超越和亲社会性成果的方式进行了深入的了解。

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism
• reflection
• eudaimonia and hedonia
• self-transcendence
• philanthropy

关键词:

• 旅游业
• 反思
• 生活意义和享乐
• 自我超越
• 博爱

Acknowledgments

Funding to support the research on which this Research Note is based was provided by the Alchemy Fund of the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management at The Pennsylvania State University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Cases were excluded in which (a) the field was left blank or had fewer than 5 words, (b) the response was copy and pasted from a web page, (c) the response was unintelligible, (d) the response indicated the participant had likely changed the vacation they were describing between the two text entries, (e) the response indicated the trip occurred more than a year ago, or (g) the response indicated that the participant could not remember the trip well enough to reflect upon it.

2 Due to an error, for the majority of participants, the scale points for the connectedness to humanity measure were presented in a randomized order (i.e. not the uniform ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’). However, given that (a) all participants in the sample passed an instructional attention check and (b) the items were used as a latent variable, we elected to use the measure in our analyses. Results remained consistent if connectedness to humanity was dropped from analyses on measures of self-transcendence.

3 Including traveling internationally, alone versus with others, and whether the trip was nature or culture-based as covariates predicting affect and adding interactions with these variables and the reflection manipulations did not change substantive conclusions. One interaction revealed that those who traveled with others experienced stronger eudaimonic and hedonic emotions after engaging in reflection than those who traveled alone. This does not alter support for the model but instead suggests that those traveling with others may have been more likely to have, or more easily recall upon being prompted to reflect, corresponding affect. Post-travel activation of such experiences among those who traveled alone may require more assistance.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Recreation, Park and Tourism Management: [grant number 223–08 1001].