Can we understand non-tourism as a form of sustainable tourism? The role of lifestyle and motivations behind non-traveling based on the Hungarian example

Abstract

This paper aims to study non-travelers in order to try to understand why they are absent from tourism and what the causes are for their decision. Our research showed that the study of postmodern causes apart from classic ones holds unique potential in the research of sustainable tourism processes as well. The results of cross-tabulation and correspondence analysis show that postmodern and classic causes are tightly connected to lifestyle, which represents the central theme of the current study based on the results of a Hungarian representative online survey. Acertain limitation is that our research is based on the case of Hungary; however, the introduced methodology can be used in general for identifying and evaluating non-travelers. As research implications, the authors believe that the methodology and results can be used by the actors of the tourism supply market and by decision makers as well, especially for segmenting purposes. If we understand who the non-tourists or non-travelers are, we can, on the one hand, determine the latent tourism potential of a tourism destination; on the other hand, we can also receive information on specific market segments, which could contribute to sustainable tourism mostly because of the postmodern causes for non-traveling.