On the Traveling-Creativity Relationship: Effects of Openness to Experience, Cultural Distance, and Creative Self-Efficacy

Abstract

It is a common belief that travel allows us to grow, get inspired, and reach fulfillment. Travels offer a highly conducive combination of cognitive resource maximization, positive emotions, and, most importantly, new, out-of-ordinary experiences, enabling creativity to flourish. However, for travel to affect creativity in any way, some conditions must be met. Of key importance are characteristics of travel destinations and travelers’ Openness to experience. This study explores the creativity-traveling relationship by analyzing occurring interactive, mediating, and correlational effects. Also, it compares how traveling and living abroad predict creativity to address the ongoing debate. The analysis comprising 136 participants demonstrated that the traveling-creativity link is stronger among people low on the Openness trait. Further, an indirect effect of creative self-efficacy in the relationship between traveling and creativity was observed. These findings suggest the potential of facilitating creativity through traveling experiences among some groups, but at the same time, they call for more in-depth research on the topic.