Compassion as a neglected motivator for sustainable tourism

ABSTRACT

Compassion is defined and identified in this paper as a powerful and universal motivator for actions that could help attain sustainable outcomes and enable aspirational forms of sustainable tourism, including just tourism, hopeful tourism and enlightened mass tourism that have not yet demonstrated real-world traction. Despite its potential, compassion has been neglected in the tourism literature. This paper reviews the 50-year quest for a “better tourism”, and presents a compassion-scape as a comprehensive and systematic framework for facilitating sector engagement with compassion. “Context” factors associated with tourism settings (e.g. level of development, purpose) and agents (e.g. mindset, psychographics, motivations) influence “encounter” elements, such as the relationship, type and distress characteristics. Subsequent “response” factors, such as type, recipient, timeframe and intention, influence the “implications” for sustainable tourism, which in turn affect the types of “intervention” (e.g. mindful interpretation, social marketing, faith injunction) implemented to achieve sustainable outcomes. The many innate methodological challenges for the researcher in measuring compassion are discussed, along with the issues involved in operationalizing the compassion-scape to engage and reform alternative tourism forms, notably volunteer tourism, pro-poor tourism, religious tourism and fair trade tourism as well as conventional mass tourism. A paper for the thinking reader.

同情心，可持续旅游中被忽视的动因

本文认为游客同情心是一个强大且普遍的动力，它能够帮助实现可持续旅游，并促进一些有助于可持续旅游形式的发展，包括公正旅游、希望旅游，以及尚未实行的大众旅游项目。尽管同情心有着很大的潜力，它在旅游文献中却是被忽略的那部分。本篇论文回顾了近50年对``更好的旅游"的探索，并将同情心现象作为促进其参与到旅游业中的一个全面系统的框架。``情境"因素与旅游背景（如旅游业发展水平、目的）相互联系，而旅游代理（如旅游倾向、心理、动机）则影响了如旅游关系、类型、以及不幸特点这类的``偶然"因素。随之而来的``回应"因素如旅游种类、接受者、时间表和旅游意图又影响了可持续旅游的``内涵"，而这些``内涵"影响了用于实现可持续发展的``干预"类型（如释译，社会营销，信仰禁止）的实施。本文讨论了诸多挑战研究者衡量游客同情心的固有方法，以及许多存在的问题，包括利用同情心现象来实施和改革选择性旅游的模式，志愿者旅游、扶贫旅游、宗教旅游、公平贸易旅游和传统大众旅游。此文写给所有关心同情心在旅游中产生的影响的读者。

KEYWORDS:

• Compassion
• ethics
• sustainable development
• motivation

关键词:

• 同情心
• 道德标准
• 可持续发展
• 动机

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Erratum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David B. Weaver

David Weaver is a professor of tourism research at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia, specializing in sustainable tourism, ecotourism, resident perceptions and destination management.

Xin Jin

Xin Jin is a lecturer at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia, specializing in destination marketing and event management.