Think back to the last ad for Disney World. Wasn’t it full of sunshine, smiles, and character interactions? There were definitely no photos of lines of hundreds of people waiting for rides. There were also no images depicting guests drenched in sweat as they walked through crowded parks.
“All the positive emotions that come from travel are great,” says Xian Li (Roberts), professor and Arthur F. McGonigle Senior Fellow in the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management at Temple University. “But the reality is that travel can also be a frustrating experience, even more so now in the post-pandemic world. We always want to associate leisure travel with fun and happiness, but that’s not always the case.”
A new study co-authored by Lee seeks to shed light on what happens to tourists who feel angry or scared while traveling. Recently published in the April 2024 issue of the Journal of Travel Research, “When Tourists Feel Angry or Afraid: The (In)Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation to Change Behavioral Intentions,” delves into how tourists manage their negative emotions, focusing specifically on emotions of anger and fear. The journal article was written and led by Karen Tang (FOX ’22), assistant professor at Middle Tennessee University and doctoral graduate at Temple University’s Fox School of Business.
The study ultimately revealed that tourists can recover from feelings of anger, but it’s not so easy when they encounter feelings of fear.
“One thing is for sure – people who travel expect a lot of fun. They set aside annual leave for that purpose and want to have the perfect vacation,” says Lee, who was recently elected second vice-president of the Travel and Tourism Research Association, one of the world’s most influential and prestigious tourism research organizations. “So tourists’ negative emotions become even more acute. They become even more upset when they’re traveling.”
Shan (Robert) Li, professor and Arthur F. McGonigle Senior Fellow in the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management at Temple University, and Karen Tang (FOX ’22), assistant professor at Middle Tennessee University and doctoral graduate at Temple University’s Fox School of Business, recently studied how tourists react when they feel angry or scared. (Courtesy photo)
For the study, Tan and Lee surveyed 1,860 potential travelers across two online pretests and three online experiments. Participants were asked to manage their emotions around two different scenarios they might encounter while on vacation: overcrowding and harassment by vendors.
In both scenarios, tourists were made to feel angry or scared. If they were angry, tourists were likely to either suppress their emotions or reappraise their emotions — that is, decide to see the situation in a different way, Tang and Lee found.
But when it scares tourists, it’s a different story.
“Once tourists start feeling scared of something, no matter how much you try to help them, you can’t help them,” says Tan, “and that’s one of the interesting findings we got – basically, tourists are more likely to bounce back from their anger. So practitioners (tourist destinations and hotel owners/operators) need to make sure they don’t put tourists in situations that will make them feel scared, because they won’t bounce back. They’ll just completely distance themselves from you.”
By way of background, Tan presents the following scenario:
“For example, let’s say a tourist is robbed while traveling. Rather than returning to their destination and facing their fear, they would rather leave the place and avoid facing that fear,” she said. “We often try to overcome our own fears, such as a fear of the dark or spiders, but tourists don’t. Tourists don’t return to their destination to overcome their fear of being robbed. They associate the destination with that frightening experience.”
The study builds on previous work by Tan and Lee that focused on the relationship between travel and negative emotions. “Guilt or Vacation: The Constraining Effect of Guilt on Vacation Decisions,” published in 2020, explored how paid vacation use in the US is declining and how employee guilt has played a key role in that.