Holiday travel, staycations, and subjective well-being

ABSTRACT

The tourism industry thrives on the notion that holiday travel improves well-being. However, scientific evidence that holiday travel is more beneficial than spending free time at home is lacking. Using the Effort-Recovery and the Limited Resources model as theoretical basis, this study investigates whether workers behave, think, and feel differently during travel than during leisure time spent at home. In a five-week longitudinal field study, we followed 24 workers during free evenings after work, a free weekend at home, and on a free weekend of domestic travel. Within-person differences were investigated between these three occasions in behavior, cognition, and emotions. During travel, employees slept more, engaged more in physical and social activities and less in obligatory activities than during free evenings after work. Hedonic well-being was higher and ruminative thinking lower during travel than during free evenings after work. Physical distance from home and work was related to engagement in resource-providing rather than resource-consuming activities and seems to translate into mental distance from everyday worries. Differences between holiday travel and weekends at home were small. Still, the findings suggest that travel may provide feelings of remoteness in places with novel and fascinating qualities, free of chores.

KEYWORDS:

• Well-being
• health
• recovery
• stress
• environmental sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [grant number 257682].

Notes on contributors

Jessica de Bloom

Dr Jessica de Bloom's field of expertise concerns longitudinal research on stress, recovery and the effects of vacations on employee well-being and work performance. She serves on the editorial board of the Scandinavian Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology.

Jeroen Nawijn

Dr Jeroen Nawijn is a Senior Lecturer at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences. His research deals with antecedents and consequences of tourists' emotions in different kinds of contexts.

Sabine Geurts

Prof. Dr Sabine Geurts is a full professor of work- and organizational psychology. She has special interests in stress, fatigue, recovery, work hours, work-life balance, workplace absenteeism, and sport psychology and serves as a consulting editor for Work & Stress.

Ulla Kinnunen

Prof. Dr Ulla Kinnunen is a full professor of work- and organizational psychology and especially interested in recovery from job strain, stress, burnout, job insecurity, work-family interface and leadership. She serves as an associate editor of Work & Stress.

Kalevi Korpela

Prof. Dr Kalevi Korpela is a full professor of environmental psychology and has published on environmental self-regulation, well-being, place attachment, and restorative experiences. He serves as a guest editor in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.