Developing a Eudaimonia Research Agenda in Travel and Tourism

Abstract

The field of travel and tourism has achieved a sig-nificant amount of academic success and recog-nition for the past 40 years or so. The accumulation of knowledge as reflected in journals and other publication outlets support this. The scope of travel and tourism research has covered a broad range of issues such as antecedents of travel behaviour, satisfaction, motivation, benefits received, social-cultural and environmental impacts of tourism activities, host and guest interactions, tourism planning and development, and economic significance of tourism in destina-tions where travel and tourism activities take place. Similarly, the research tools and approaches used to examine these issues also reveal a high degree of methodological sophistication and the-oretical underpinnings that help us understand the production and consumption of tourism expe-riences and services. A most recent research trend also reveals that while acknowledging economic significance, the value of tourism activities has transitioned to focus more on non-economic measures such as quality of life (QOL) of stakeholders, satisfaction, wellness, an increased focus on abstract forms of value such as perceived quality of life, sense of well-being and sustain-able business practices. More specifically, there has been a notable increase in the amount of research that has focused on QOL and well-being of tourism stakeholders in the past 15 years or so. In this vein, the goal of this chapter is to contrib-ute to this growing body of knowledge by devel-oping a eudaimonia research agenda in travel and tourism. The chapter has three main sections. The first section introduces the term of eudaimonia and its conceptual foundations. The second sec-tion, which is the main focus of the chapter, intro-duces to the reader selected eudaimonia theories and show how these theories can guide future research in travel and tourism. The chapter ends with a conclusion section.