Measuring Tourists’ Emotional Solidarity with One Another—A Modification of the Emotional Solidarity Scale

Abstract

Although tourists’ affective bonds with one another are essential to their travel experiences as well as their pretrip anticipations, it nevertheless remains as an underexplored topic in tourism research. Responding to this research gap, this study modified the Emotional Solidarity Scale (ESS), which is originally intended to measure affective bonds between tourists and residents and developed new scales for its theoretical antecedents (i.e., shared beliefs, shared behaviors, and propensity to interact), using potential faith-based tourists in the United States as the target population. For scale modification and development, both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used. The modified ESS (resulting in two unique factors— communality and fairness) along with the new scales for its antecedents demonstrated strong psychometric properties. Further studies are suggested to confirm the two-dimensional structure of the modified ESS and the relationships between the three antecedents in tourists’ intragroup relationship settings.

Achieving Environmentally Responsible Behavior for Tourists and Residents: A Norm Activation Theory Perspective

“…Future studies could expand it further, with other variables accounting for individuals’ personal values, green self-identity, and personality traits, for instance. Another variable that future studies could address is emotional solidarity between residents and tourists (Joo and Woosnam 2019; Ribeiro et al 2018), which could affect environmentally responsible behavior. Future research could also investigate how emotional solidarity could lead to improved sustainable tourism.…”

Yuanfen and traveling neo‐tribes: Social interactions and group relations among Chinese road travelers

“…For example, Gössling, Cohen, and Hibbert (2018) states that "travel provided meaning for remaining socially connected," which means tourism has become a mechanism for connectedness. Interactions between travelers, though of short duration, are as common as interactions between hosts and guests (Joo & Woosnam, 2019). Social interactions between tourists have been found to be closely related to tourism experiences (Lin et al, 2019;Wang, 1999).…”

“…Empirical studies on social interactions in more diverse scenarios remain insufficient (Joo & Woosnam, 2019), and their importance should not be disregarded. For example, researchers have called for more attention to social interactions in non-institutionalized tourism situations, especially through empirical investigations of social interactions between strangers ( Zhou, 2020).…”

Resident-Tourist Value Co-Creation in the Intangible Cultural Heritage Tourism Context: The Role of Residents’ Perception of Tourism Development and Emotional Solidarity

“…Woosnam and Norman put forward "Emotional Solidarity Scale" (ESS) by studying the emotional relationship between residents and tourists, aiming at the limitations of Gronvold's scale which uses single factor analysis method to measure complex structural relationship, which divides emotional solidarity into three factors: welcoming, emotional closeness, and sympathetic understanding [18]. In 2020, Joo and Woosnam further revised the ESS scale by adding two factors: community and fairness [82]. As a variable to measure emotion, the emotional solidarity of residents with tourists can significantly improve their supportive attitudes toward tourism development [83].…”