Self-care for the researcher: dark tourism in Varanasi,India

ABSTRACT

Dark tourism is a popular niche of tourism that allows tourists to come into close proximity with death, atrocity, and the macabre, and therefore has the potential to be an emotional and even traumatic encounter for tourists. While this context has inspired tourism researchers to investigate dark tourists’ motivations, as well as the marketing and representation of dark tourism sites, we have yet to attend to its implications for the researcher. This paper analyzes the emotional experiences and aftermath of fieldwork at the cremation grounds of Varanasi, India, which involved working closely with tourists, Doms, and Aghoris by focusing on the relations of reflexivity, positionality, and emotionality. As a result, we suggest a number of reflexive and self-care practices to be put into place so as to attend to the researchers’ emotional well-being in the fieldwork process.     

Consumers’ luxury restaurant reservation session abandonment behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: The influence of luxury restaurant attachment,emotional ambivalence,and luxury consumption goals

The purpose of this research is to examine how consumers’ attachment to luxury restaurants and their emotional ambivalence contribute to their reservation session abandonment during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In addition, the moderating effect of luxury consumption goals (e.g., self-presentation motives, status consumption, and need for uniqueness) is examined. A total of 408 participants completed questionnaires, and the results reveal that luxury restaurant attachment significantly influences consumers’ emotional ambivalence, which in turn causes them to not complete their reservation sessions. Furthermore, the moderating effects of status consumption and need for uniqueness are supported.     

自我民族志在旅游研究中应用评析

在后现代主义思潮的影响下,自我民族志在反思传统民族志中诞生。自我民族志凸显了"自我",是一种对研究者亲身经历的文化体验展开反思性描述的质性研究方法,已经引起了国内外旅游学者关注与应用。但这些研究大都仅采用了自我民族志的方法,未对自我民族志的理论与方法展开深入的探讨。该文以此为契机,首先,在理论层面梳理了自我民族志的起源、内涵,重点阐述了自我民族志与旅游研究的逻辑联系,论述了旅游研究对自我民族志的意义。然后,在此基础上,梳理了2000—2019年71篇应用自我民族志的旅游研究论文,重点阐述旅游领域中自我民族志适用的研究情景,结合文献分析各研究情景中方法论的优势,说明方法论局限以及克服局限的策略。最后,结合已有文献阐述自我民族志如何应用于旅游研究,提炼自我民族志在旅游研究中的理论贡献,并进一步讨论旅游研究应用自我民族志的巨大空间以及对自我民族志范式的贡献。     

群体服务失误下顾客间“关系”互动对抱怨的影响机制--群体极化和去个体化的中介作用

顾客抱怨研究由来已久，但以往研究更多停留在个体层面，缺乏群体层面的关注。文章基于中国人际“关系”视角，将群体服务失误下顾客间互动分为工具性关系互动和情绪性关系互动，通过设计旅游团遭遇群体服务失误的情景模拟实验，探讨群体服务失误下顾客间“关系”互动对抱怨的影响机制。研究结果表明，群体服务失误下，工具性关系互动通过影响群体极化和去个体化进而影响顾客直接抱怨，且群体极化的中介作用更明显；顾客间情绪性关系互动越强，去个体化和群体极化程度越大，进而诱发更强的直接抱怨倾向，且去个体化在其影响过程中作用更强。研究有助于丰富顾客间互动对抱怨影响的研究视角，完善顾客群体性抱怨理论框架，也对顾客群体抱怨处理提供决策依据。     

A diary study of work consequences for hotel employees victimized by supervisor from a demand-resource perspective on employee emotions

How would perceiving oneself as a victim of abusive supervisor behavior affect one’s work attitudes? This study examines the mediating role of emotional change on the detrimental work outcomes caused by hotel employees’ perceived victim identity. It further investigates how emotional exhaustion moderates the relationship between perceived victim identity and two outcome variables, daily job satisfaction and work engagement. The research hypotheses were tested by a multi-level analysis (cf., hierarchical linear modeling) using a sample of 128 hotel employees in China who took surveys twice per day over 14 consecutive days. The findings show that emotional change significantly mediates the negative effect of hotel employees’ perceived victim identity on their work attitudes, and emotional exhaustion moderates this effect such that higher exhaustion exacerbates the negative relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings for hospitality researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

负面情感事件对一线服务人员情绪、满意及承诺的影响——以高交互服务行业为例

高交互性是服务行业的重要特征之一,服务过程中,服务人员会与顾客高频率接触,并通过与顾客的互动传递服务价值.在服务传递过程中通常会伴随出现一些情感事件,多为服务失败等负面情感事件,影响服务人员的情绪和满意.该研究在文献回顾的基础上,构建了高交互服务行业中情感事件对一线服务员情绪影响的模型,并以餐饮业为例对模型进行了实证检验,最终证实:管理者关怀导向和雇员的事件归因会对员工负面情绪产生影响,并最终影响其内部补救后的满意和情感承诺；同时,服务人员的情绪智力差异对模型起到调节作用.最后,文章阐述了研究结论与不足和下一步的研究方向.     

Recognizing the Significance of Culture and Ethnicity: Exploring Hidden Assumptions of Homogeneity

Despite increasing focus on culture and its impact upon study results, researchers may be unaware of or ignore their own cultural biases and assumptions in interpretation of the data. Often when similarities exist between researcher and participant, the researcher may assume cultural homogeneity exists. This article provides an illustration of the problematic nature of such assumptions through the examination of a study on entrepreneurship and the intersection of work, leisure, and family. Participants included 13 men and women who were home-based business entrepreneurs living in an urban community within Newfoundland, Canada. Additional themes were uncovered when culture was addressed, including the importance of family, the division between public and private in the household, and the interconnection of gender and culture. A recommendation is given to use greater care when conducting research with participants who share a similar racial background with the researcher.     

Lifestyling entrepreneurs’ sociological expressionism

This study explores the tourism host-home relationship investigated through documentary analysis of photographs choreographed through mutual negotiation between hosts and researcher (collaborative auto-driving) and participants’ spoken narratives (photo-elicitation interviews); we identify the significance for tourism product construction. Major findings concern the sociological expressionism of the tourism lifestyle entrepreneur who creates a certain personal brand identity or ‘lifestyling’ through their commercial home presentation; ‘private’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘temporal’ classification categories of hosts’ favourite spaces in the home are identified, based upon the individual spatial management strategies employed. Depictions of favourite spaces emphasised emotional and sensorial dimensions rather than material things present, and were described as spaces of contentment and tranquillity essential for energising hosts in the ongoing production of the commercial home.     

Organizational injustice and emotional labor of hotel front-line employees

Using equity and appraisal theories to integrate four dimensions of organizational justice and emotional labor, this study examines effects of organizational injustice and emotional labor. Perceptions of front-line hotel employees of customer injustice (interpersonal and informational), procedural and distributive injustice and their perceived effect on employees’ emotional labor and subsequent job satisfaction were examined. Our finding suggests the distributive injustice had an effect on hotel employees’ emotional labor, while effects of informational and procedural injustice on emotional labor were moderated by gender.     

Negotiating ‘ethically important moments’ in research with young people: reflections of a novice researcher

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a surge in interest around ethics in research. Originally focused on the compilation of ethics guidelines and the importance of having all research approved by institutional review boards before commencement, discussions of research ethics have more recently centred on how such guidelines translate into ethical practice during the research process. Leisure research has been no exception to this trend. Using as an example, a research project in Ireland centred on focus groups with young people (aged 15–19) regarding their physical activity behaviours and preferences, this paper explores the situated judgement of the interviewer, a novice researcher, as she attempted to navigate four ethically important moments. Discussions centre on moments where the interviewer’s situated judgement resulted in research ethics being compromised and moments where the interviewer experienced difficulty reconciling personal and research ethics. Our intention in sharing the situations and resulting questions from this research is to shine a light on the decision-making which takes place during the research process and consider how researchers might prepare adequately to make decisions in an ethically sound way.     

Effects of emotional solidarity and tourism-related stress on residents' quality of life

This study explores how residents' lives are influenced by their emotional and psychological responses to tourism development. In particular, we propose that residents' emotional solidarity with tourists and perceived tourism-related stress significantly affect individuals' quality of life (QoL) within their community. Findings reveal that the relationship between residents' emotional solidarity with tourists and perceptions of QoL are mediated by perceived tourism-related stress. Though the research connecting residents' emotional and psychological responses to tourism and their QoL continues to grow within the tourism literature, this work marks a new research direction that establishes connections among residents' emotional solidarity, stress, and QoL, using an integrated model. By focusing on the emotional and psychological aspects of tourism impacts rather than tangible ones, this study provides alternative perspectives to the existing QoL literature. Findings further expand the nomological network of tourism and the QoL research paradigm and inform tourism development policy.     

Consumption of Movie Experience: Cognitive and Affective Approaches

This study examines the structural relationships among film quality, value, and satisfaction on the perspective of moviegoers. The experience economy concept is employed as the theoretical framework, where moviegoers’ cognitive and affective evaluations are projected in fulfilling their perceived value. Moviegoers’ perceived movie attributes and experiences are assessed to evaluate the moviegoers’ satisfactions through functional and emotional values. In particular, this article investigates how four dimensions of experience mediate the effect of movie attributes on perceived value and satisfaction. A total of 565 samples were analyzed with structural equation modeling to investigate the relationship of ‘quality—value—satisfaction.’ The findings show that two movie attributes (core and peripheral) affect three dimensions of experience (entertainment, educational, and escapist), which in turn influence functional and emotional values, and moviegoers’ satisfaction. The results also confirm that emotional value is a more powerful predictor of moviegoers’ satisfaction than functional value.     

A Research on Professional Tour Guides Emotional Intelligence and Problem-Solving Skills

The purpose of this study is to determine the emotional intelligence and problem-solving skills’ effect on professional tourist guides’ managerial problem encountering frequencies during daily trips, additionally to reveal the emotional intelligence and problem-solving skills relation with demographical factors. Within this scope, the related body of literature reviewed, the relevant studies utilized and in order to obtain primary data for this study an online survey conducted on professional tourist guides working in Turkey. Three hundred actively serving tourist guides in various regions of Turkey constituted the research sample. To have inferential statistics regarding the variables of the research; t-test, analysis of variance, correlation analysis and regression analysis are applied. In the light of statistical analysis findings, it is concluded that; high emotional intelligence means high problem-solving skills and as the emotional intelligence level increases, the frequency of encountering managerial problems decreases and both the emotional intelligence scores and problem-solving skills improve as the age increases.     

Moderating role of hotel employees’ gender and job position on the relationship between emotional intelligence and emotional labor

The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of deluxe hotel employees’ emotional intelligence on their emotional labor, and the moderating effects of employees’ diversity (gender and job position) on the relationship between emotional intelligence and emotional labor. The results showed that the use of emotion (UOE) had the largest effect on surface acting during emotional labor, and self-emotion appraisal (SEA) had the largest effect on deep acting. In addition, the study found moderating effects of employees’ diversity on the relationship between emotional intelligence and emotional labor, and the effects of others’ emotion appraisal (OEA) on surface acting were shown to be significantly higher among female employees than among males. Furthermore, the effects of the use of emotions (UOE) on deep acting were larger in the FOH than in the BOH. However, results showed that the effects of regulation of emotion (ROE) on deep acting were significantly stronger in the BOH than in the FOH.     

‘Freaky is just how I get down’: investigating the fluidity of minority ethnic feminine subjectivities in dance

This article addresses a lacuna of research into minority ethnic young women’s leisure participation by specifically focusing on the experiences and embodied subjectivities of two ethnic young women participating in dance. In the context of a qualitative research study based in an American inner‐city, post‐structural theory is used to signal the operation of intersecting racial, ethnic, gender, and class discourses and power relations. This analysis focuses on how the two young women engaged with dance cultures that were underpinned by particular dance forms; these dance forms arguably reproduced specific versions of ‘normalised’ femininity. The article then illustrates how the young women actively negotiated their dance cultures in order to construct multiple and shifting minority ethnic subjectivities. Commentary from one young woman, ‘Carrie’, indicates that she used her high school dance spaces as well as festival and club dance spaces to take up fluid white, black and ‘mixed’ subjectivities. I then investigate how a Salsa dance space provided the discursive resources through which another young woman, ‘Jenny’, constructed a proliferating diasporic identity. While Jenny identified as both black and Haitian, her hyperbolic dance performances re‐enacted various other subjectivities. These accounts demonstrate the possibility that young women can take up multiple versions of femininity in their leisure participation. These femininities reflect both alignment and resistance to dominant discourses which have ascendancy within young women’s leisure contexts.     

It’s in the air: Aroma marketing and affective response in the hotel world

Smell is considered to be the sense that is most closely attached to emotional reactions. This makes scent in the hotel environment an important atmospheric variable to study, because fragrances are expected to increase the likelihood of producing an emotional reaction from consumers. Capitalizing on smell’s ability to cue memories and conjure up emotions, the purpose of this research is to examine the emotional states evoked by various hotel scents in a hotel business in Hong Kong that uses scent throughout its premises. More specifically, this study intends to make a connection between the emotional states evoked by the hotel scents and how hotel businesses can make use of their guests’ emotional responses. Scent marketing is an overlooked subject in hospitality and tourism research.     

情感凝聚对旅游者环境负责任行为的影响研究——晋东南地区传统村落民宿情境下的实证检验

旅游者环境负责任行为对乡村旅游的高质量发展意义重大。本文基于情感凝聚理论,探讨旅游者与民宿主之间的情感凝聚对其环境负责任行为的预测效果。以晋东南地区传统村落为案例地收集数据,采用定性和定量相结合的研究方法,对乡村民宿情境下,旅游者环境负责任行为的维度及“情感凝聚—环境负责任行为”影响路径的存在与否,进行实证检验。结果显示：（1）乡村民宿情境下,旅游者环境负责任行为既包括生态环境负责任行为,亦包括社会环境负责任行为和经济环境负责任行为;（2）旅游者与民宿主之间的情感凝聚能够显著促进其环境负责任行为,影响程度从高到低依次是生态环境负责任行为、社会环境负责任行为和经济环境负责任行为;（3）情感凝聚的3个二阶构念对旅游者环境负责任行为的影响程度从高到低依次是同情理解、情感亲密度和受欢迎程度。本文拓展了情感凝聚理论的应用范畴,为旅游者环境负责任行为相关研究提供了新的视角,亦为乡村旅游目的地政府和企业激发旅游者环境负责任行为提供了实践启示。     

Do mindfulness and perceived organizational support work? Fear of COVID-19 on restaurant frontline employees’ job insecurity and emotional exhaustion

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has impacted the restaurant industry tremendously. Building on the Conservation of Resources Theory, the current study investigates the relationships among U.S. restaurant frontline employees’ fear of COVID-19, job insecurity, and emotional exhaustion. The study also examines the moderating role of employee mindfulness and perceived organizational support. SPSS PROCESS macro was used for hypotheses testing. Results suggested that restaurant frontline employees’ fear of COVID-19 was positively associated with both job insecurity and emotional exhaustion. Fear of COVID-19 had an indirect effect on restaurant frontline employees’ emotional exhaustion via job insecurity. Employee mindfulness buffered the positive relationship between fear of COVID-19 and job insecurity. Perceived organizational support was found to intensify the positive relationship between job insecurity and frontline employees’ emotional exhaustion. The research provided useful human resource management practices for U.S. restaurant businesses amid crises such as COVID-19.     

Memory and forgetfulness in tourism crisis research

Even though academic attention has been paid on the tourism-memory nexus, the concept of forgetfulness in tourism has been largely overlooked and remains unexplored. The aim of this research note is to introduce the concept of forgetfulness alongside memory within tourism scholarship to discuss the way in which it may be integrated with future research. In so doing, the discussion focused on a tourist crisis context as tourists’ post-crisis behaviour often reflects forgetfulness as evidenced by their travel resumption patterns. Overall, by linking the concepts of forgetfulness and tourism, this research note contributes to knowledge advancement on tourism crises by shifting attention away from risk perceptions towards an understanding of the cognitive and emotional processes influencing tourist behaviour. The research note also illuminates understanding of how crises are forgotten; hence, contributes to the improvement of crisis management strategies. The research note concludes by proposing an agenda for future research.