The SAGE Handbook of Tourism Management

Theories, Concepts and Disciplinary Approaches to Tourism

Chris Cooper, Serena Volo, William C. Gartner, Noel Scott, Chris Cooper, Serena Volo, William C. Gartner, Noel Scott, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781526461124
• eBook ISBN: 9781526461421
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

The SAGE Handbook of Tourism Management is a critical, state-of-the-art and authoritative review of tourism management, written by leading international thinkers and academics in the field. With a strong focus on theories, concepts and disciplinary approaches to tourism studies, the chapters in this volume are framed as critical synoptic pieces covering key developments, current issues and debates, and emerging trends and future considerations for the field.

Part One: Researching Tourism
Part Two: Social Analysis
Part Three: Economic Analysis
Part Four: Technological Analysis
Part Five: Environmental Analysis
Part Six: Political Analysis

This handbook offers a fresh, contemporary and definitive look at tourism management, making it an essential resource for academics, researchers and students.

1 An Introduction to The Handbook

Chris Cooper

William C. Gartner

Noel Scott

Serena Volo

The aim of the two-volume SAGE Handbook of Tourism Management is to publish critical, state of the art, authoritative reviews of tourism management written by leading thinkers and international academics in the field. The focus of this first volume, Theories, Concepts and Disciplinary Approaches to Tourism, is on theories, concepts and disciplines that underpin tourism management, whilst the second volume Applications of Theories and Concepts to Tourism takes those ideas and shows how they have been applied thereby enriching the subject of tourism studies. Each chapter is designed to be a critical, readable and sometimes controversial account of the development of the literature in each of the key sub-fields of tourism, as identified by the editors.

Each chapter in the Handbook has been commissioned and written by an internationally renowned scholar in the field. The chapters are framed as synoptic pieces, for an audience that may be new to the subject – including upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, faculty members and informed practitioners. Each chapter in the Handbook therefore acts as a comprehensive set of signposts to further information on the subject. The chapters have been written to cover four key areas:

1. The development of the field – key milestones, literature, methodologies, events and writers involved;
2. Framing the field – the current state of the art and a clearly legible mapping of the field into main areas of study. In other words, a comprehensive and timely discussion of where the literature is now, and why;
3. Emerging issues and a future-focussed agenda for the field, including any methodological issues; and
4. A comprehensive reference list.

As editors, we have ensured that each chapter provides a coherent bounding of the literature surveyed and that there are justifiable reasons why certain literature is included and other literature excluded. In addition, the calibre of the authors was a key determinant to ensure that the analysis of the literature surveyed is complete in terms of discussions of any relevant methodologies, general conclusions to be drawn from the literature, and current debates surrounding the topic. This has allowed each chapter to draw reasoned and authoritative conclusions as to where the literature is (or should be) going and the important questions left to be asked. Every chapter has been subject to a light touch review by the editors.

This volume, Theories, Concepts and Disciplinary Approaches to Tourism, reflects that the nature of tourism as a subject is based upon a set of theories, concepts and disciplines drawn from other subject areas. We have compiled these theories, concepts and principles in this volume. Its structure follows a classic STEEP analysis to give it rigour and to ensure comprehensive coverage of each field. In addition we have commissioned two research methods chapters – qualitative and quantitative – at the beginning of this volume to emphasize the maturing and increasingly sophisticated approach of tourism studies to research methodologies and philosophies. The second part of the Handbook focuses on social analysis by drawing on the long-standing contributions of the traditional and established core disciplines of geography, history, sociology and psychology. These are followed by chapters on the more recent fields of ethics and network analysis. Economic analysis forms the third part of the Handbook given its significance in the tourism subject area with chapters rooted in traditional economics approaches and closing with the more recent focus on services management. In the fourth part we have drawn together chapters focussing on technology given its transformative impact on the tourism management. This begins with transportation and is followed by chapters on IT, the digital tourism economy, knowledge management and innovation. The fifth part is devoted to environmental analysis drawing upon a rich literature that dates back to the late 1960s. Here the chapters range from established subjects such as the tourism–environment relationship, sustainability and natural area tourism to the more recent issues of climate change, biodiversity, and tourism's relationship with energy, oil and water. The final part provides a set of chapters on the political analysis of tourism.

The editors are grateful to all of the authors who have contributed to these volumes, not only for their scholarship and subject leadership, but also as they have been a pleasure to deal with, professional and thorough at all times. We are also grateful to the staff at SAGE who have been hugely supportive and encouraging of the Handbook: Matthew Waters as Commissioning Editor, who had the vision for the Handbook as well as Colette Wilson, Serena Ugolini and Matthew Oldfield for their support in managing the various chapter drafts and submissions.

Part I Researching Tourism

2 Qualitative Research and Tourism Studies

Gayle R. Jennings

Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world. … This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. (Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 2011: 3)

Historically and globally, the use of qualitative research in tourism studies has been punctuated by a set of episodes that have been heterogeneously experienced. In the human sciences, these episodes have been referred to as ‘moments’ and include ‘traditional’, ‘modernist’, ‘blurred genres’, ‘paradigm wars’, ‘crisis of representation’, ‘postmodern’, ‘postexperimental inquiry’, ‘methodologically contested present’, ‘paradigm proliferation’, ‘the fractured posthuman present’ and ‘the uncertain utopian future’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2018a, b). In tourism studies, these episodes or moments continue to be manifested and disparately experienced. Why? Because the nature of their manifestation is temporally, culturally, socially, geo-spatially, politically and personally determined. A ‘single’ narrative of using qualitative research in tourism studies does not exist. There are only multiplicities and manifold perspectivities, which cannot be captured in this chapter. They can be alluded to and patterns recognized but not authentically represented. For example, my combined subjectivities cannot speak authentically about using qualitative research in tourism studies, in the various nations of Africa, South America, Asia, Central America, Eastern Europe, the European Union, the Middle East, North America, Oceania, South America, or the Caribbean. Nor can I represent the multiplicity of peoples’ experiences in those nations or give voice to their individual polyvocalities and how these influence/d their own engagements in qualitative research. To attempt to do so would replicate the same ‘“objective” colonizing’ practices of early and colonial ethnographers, traditionalists (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005: 15), and thereby ‘other’ their voices (Arthur J. Vidich and Stanford M. Lyman, 2000: 41). Importantly, what I can do is to signal that these represent silences in this chapter; silences, which current and future generations of qualitative researchers need to fill to address this ‘crisis of representation’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2018b). Subsequently, in constructing this chapter's narrative, I recognize that it is but one possible storying among others.

As Denzin and Lincoln (1994a: 479) remind us, ‘writing, … [is] an interpretive, personal and political act’. And of course, like all texts this chapter is subjectively derived; as well as spatially, culturally, temporally and politically determined. My writing and beingness are intertwined and cannot be disassociated from the act of writing and using language (Denzin and Lincoln, 2018b). My polyvocality or the multiple I's of me as a qualitative researcher all serve to inform and situate this text. I am a senior, white, middle-class, married, Anglo-Celtic Australian woman, I have been a qualitative researcher for over four decades in the disciplines of education, sociology, social psychology, and the fields of Asian, tourism and business studies. Within tourism studies, I have been a teacher, researcher, supervisor, examiner, reviewer, editorial board member, tourism association executive member, writer, mentor, coach, consultant and many other things –and yes, best not to forget a ‘facilitator’ and ‘gatekeeper’! Subsequently, my multiple lived experiences found this text, a text, which focuses on framing and mapping the field of qualitative research in tourism studies including its development, reflections on emerging issues as well as suggestions for a future agenda for qualitative research in tourism studies. Because tourism studies is a twentieth-century addition to academe, I have chosen to include a twofold storying – one of qualitative research in general and one of tourism studies. Variously in this chapter, the storying technique is used disparately or in a blended form. But first, in addition to the definition of qualitative research presented at the beginning of this chapter, let's add an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on the Editor and Contributors
• 1 An Introduction to The Handbook
• Part I Researching Tourism
• 2 Qualitative Research and Tourism Studies
• 3 Quantitative Research Approaches to Tourism
• Part II Social Analysis
• 4 Economic Geographies of Tourism: A Critical and Contested Discourse
• 5 Tourism Histories
• 6 Key Milestones and Changing Directions in the Sociology of Tourism
• 7 Psychology of Tourism
• 8 Anthropology of Tourism
• 9 Tourism Ethics
• 10 Network Analysis: Quantitative Methods in Tourism
• Part III Economic Analysis
• 11 Economics of Tourism
• 12 Tourism Data Sources: From Official Statistics to Big Data
• 13 Analysing and Forecasting Tourism Demand
• 14 Tourism Supply Side Analysis
• 15 Small Business and Entrepreneurship Research in Tourism: A Review and Comment
• 16 Tourism Human Resources
• 17 Service Management and Tourism
• Part IV Technological Analysis
• 18 Tourism and Surface Transport
• 19 Aviation and Tourism
• 20 The Digital Economy of Tourism
• 21 Tourism and Knowledge Management
• 22 Business Model Innovation in Tourism: Opportunities and Challenges
• Part V Environmental Analysis
• 23 The Tourism–Environment Relationship
• 24 Sustainability and Resilience: Two Sides of the Same Coin?
• 25 Climate Change and Tourism: Mitigation and Global Climate Agreements
• 26 Tourism and Biodiversity
• 27 Researching the Nexus of Protected Natural Area Tourism Management: Milestones and Future Directions
• 28 Tourism, Energy, Oil and Water
• Part VI Political Analysis
• 29 Tourism Institutions and Agencies
• 30 Tourism Policy
• 31 Tourism Governance
• 32 Tourism Planning: Evolution and Trends for the Future
• 33 Foreign Direct Investment and Tourism Development: A Theoretical and Empirical Review
• 34 Globalization, Supranationalism and Tourism
• Index