Can Tourists Experience Emotional Solidarity with Residents? Testing Durkheim’s Model from a New Perspective

Abstract

In the context of resident and tourist relationships in a destination, perspectives of the former are rarely considered. This is likely a function of the continued attention paid to studies focusing on the former in addressing sociocultural impacts of tourism. This work examines the relationship as perceived by tourists, utilizing the theoretical framework of emotional solidarity. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the factor structure of the four constructs (i.e., shared beliefs, shared behavior, interaction, and emotional solidarity) within Durkheim's model. This works shows continued support for the framework with each of the antecedent constructs significantly predicting emotional solidarity, explaining approximately 55% of the variance in the construct. Implications and limitations of the work along with future research opportunities are discussed.

The Effect of Residents’ Attitude toward Tourism on their Pro-Tourism Behaviour: A Case Study of Hua-Hin Prachubkirikhan

“…The result that welcome tourists behaviour affected attitude toward tourism and pro-tourism behaviour supported the findings of the studies by Woosnam (2011) and Woosnam and Aleshinloye (2013). Similarly, in keeping with the findings of Stylidis and Terzidou (2014), Gursoy, Chi, and Dyer (2010), and Dyer, Gursoy, Sharma, and Carter (2007), the present study revealed that perceived local economy affected both attitude toward tourism and pro-tourism behaviour.…”

Tourists’ Destination Loyalty through Emotional Solidarity with Residents: An Integrative Moderated Mediation Model

“…Through structural equation modeling, tourists' emotional solidarity with residents, in particular feeling welcomed and sympathetic understanding, positively influenced loyalty (Hypotheses 1a and 1c). Despite being an important element in understanding tourists' emotional solidarity with residents (see Woosnam and Aleshinloye 2013;Woosnam 2015a;2015b), emotional closeness was not a significant direct predictor of destination loyalty (Hypothesis 1b). A plausible explanation according to Woosnam and Aleshinloye (2015), may be related to the cultural acceptance of particular concepts within the emotional closeness factor (i.e., fairness).…”

“…Woosnam and Aleshinloye (2013), in building on the work of Woosnam (2012), tested Durkheim's model from a tourists' perspective, showed how interaction, shared beliefs, and shared behavior each significantly predicted levels of emotional solidarity. To date, a limited focus has been placed on considering emotional solidarity as an antecedent of other measures.…”

Does Tourist–Host Social Contact Reduce Perceived Cultural Distance?

“…Their purposes of travel set them apart from other inter-cultural contacts, such as those of immigrants and temporary sojourners (Pearce 1982). With the different tourists' types and travel modes, their degree of contact with the hosts 7 varies (Woosnam and Aleshinloye 2012;Rasmi et al 2014; Kirillova et al 2015; Luo, Brown, and Huang 2015).As a fundamental work in the research on tourist-host social contact, Cohen (1972) developed a fourfold tourist typology. According to the degree of familiarity and novelty in travel, tourists can be categorized into four types: organized mass tourist, individual mass tourist, the explorer, and the drifter.…”