TRM 450 X Research Methodology

1. TRM 450 XResearch Methodology Spring Semester 2004 Dr. Zongqing Zhou

2. CHAPTER ONE • This chapter has two main objectives: • to reveal the breadth of research need in tourism. • to emphasis the opportunity for stimulating progress in tourism by involving many disciplines in research.

3. CHAPTER ONE • Research in tourism has been slow to develop. Reasons for this may be: • a preoccupation with promotion has tended to favor large funding for promotion and little for research. • the general lack of understanding of how sweeping and complicated the field of tourism really is. • a general lack of faith in the power of enlightenment that properly designed research can produce.

4. Benefits of research • Three sectors of tourism decision makers could benefit from research findings: • governments, as prime developers of tourism infrastructure (water, waste, police, fire protection, and attractions), need facts for enlightened policies and action. • commercial enterprise needs the results from studies of traveler trends as well as factors contributing to better business success. • nonprofit organizations need greater information on their roles as developers and managers of important parts of tourism such as museums, festivals, events, and cultural attractions.

5. Tourism knowledge today is building through a variety of means • tourism practitioners know certain things because of tenacity. Beliefs of certain truths prevail in spite of new objective research that proves them wrong. • the method of authority. It may come from public acceptance, from one who is reputed to have superior knowledge, or from governmental decree. • gaining tourism knowledge by means of intuition. Certain information about tourism is accepted because it just seems right.

6. Tourism knowledge today is building through a variety of means • gaining knowledge through science, obtained by means of objective research. In scientific research, there are many points along the way of investigation that forces critical examination.

7. Research Approaches (Four) • to describe and inventory - Tourism knowledge is in such a stage of infancy that descriptive research is valuable and necessary. Throughout the United States, State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plans employ descriptive research to inventory recreational facilities. These reports catalog items important to tourism, such as campgrounds, picnic facilities, playgrounds, swimming areas, gold courses, boating areas, and other recreational development. Also important to tourism are time-series descriptive studies, such as those prepared by the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

8. Research Approaches (Four) • to test - Food services may experiment with various menu combinations. Maintenance managers may run experiments on the most cost-effective maintenance strategies. Airlines may run experiments on special price-destination packages. • to predict, forecast - Decisions on the purchase of new generations of equipment, new sites, and new technology may rest on predictions of increased demand for a specific tourism service or product. • to model, simulate - To set up hypothetical situations. In a way, this represents the creation of a scenario patterned after real-world situations.

9. Tourism requires multidisciplinary research • Marketing - is an application of behavior, business, and economics with its own set of research approaches. Adapting the scientific method to marketing, secondary data searches and survey research methods are used most frequently. Marketing research follows generally the scientific method: formulation of the problem; determination of sources of information and the research design; preparation of data-collection forms; design of the sample and collection of the data; analysis and interpretation of the data; and preparation of the research report. Consumer behavior forms the foundation for much of marketing decision making. The main purpose of consumer behavior research is to try to explain why tourists do what they do.

10. Tourism requires multidisciplinary research • Behavior - Psychology and sociology have for years provided research insight into human behavior and how it is organized. Since tourism is dependent upon people’s propensity, habits, and desires, behavioral research is a major element in building new knowledge and solving tourism problems. The process of behavioral research often uses methods of survey research and again follows the basic steps of the scientific method.

11. Tourism requires multidisciplinary research • Business - The business sector of tourism has much to gain from research. The term research and development is associated with business. In business, operations research usually emphasizes production and goods handling. However, in actual business organization, it may become merged with marketing research and research and development departments. Adaptation of the scientific method of business research often results in the following research process: (1) exploration of the situation, (2) development of research design, (3) collection of data, and (4) analysis and interpretation of results.

12. Tourism requires multidisciplinary research • History - has increasingly applied scientific methods to describe and explain the past. Greatly expanding historical restoration and interpretation, as tourist attractions, demand accurate research of past events and details of sites and architecture. Modern tourists require increasingly sophisticated description and presentation of historic places. Historical research can contribute much to the development and understanding of tourism, not only through documentation of the past but also through identification of attraction potential.

13. Tourism requires multidisciplinary research • Geography - is defined as “the science concerned with the special location, distribution, pattern, and organization of human activities on land and space.” Research has also been focused on the relationship between geographic factors and preferred zones of development. Geographers employ the fundamental rules and procedures of scientific research. Their research can be divided into two categories - predictive and explanatory. Many geographers have produced studies and models that help explain spatial relationships of tourism.

14. Tourism requires multidisciplinary research • Anthropology - seeks to identify, describe, and explain holistically the many manifestations of mankind. Anthropology utilizes both exploratory descriptive study and hypothesis-testing research. The field of anthropology will in the future provide greater insight into the forces that generate tourism, the transactions between cultures, and the consequences of tourism development.

15. Tourism requires multidisciplinary research • Political Science - The basis tenets of the scientific method are followed in political science research. The research designs of social science are used, but political science studies for tourism may use a wide range of methods depending on the context. Needed is greater study of government’s involvement, roles, and implications for tourism.

16. Tourism requires multidisciplinary research • Planning and Design - This research is not along any common lines of strategy but generally reflects the scientific method by seeking objective information and solution to problems. Challenges in tourism planning require deeper research of the roles of official urban planning and zoning. Because civic officials determine much of a city’s physical and economic growth, these decision deserve greater research study for adaptation to tourism.

17. Tourism requires multidisciplinary research • Futurism - Philosophers, scientists, technicians, and planners have joined in making insightful studies of trends, not necessarily to predict but to identify future possibilities. Futuristics can be defined as “applied history”. Tourism, extremely vulnerable to many factors of the future, may look more and more to the works of these scientists involved in future-oriented research.

18. The complexity of tourism demands research input from many disciplines • leisure and recreation studies • park and resource management research • engineering research • communications • wildlife, fisheries, and forestry • Probably the greatest amount of outdoor-recreation research in the United States has been sponsored by the several experiment stations of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service

19. The complexity of tourism demands research input from many disciplines • Marine engineering and oceanography • the field of law • medicine, health, and nutrition • the leisure implications of veterinary medicine • studies in tourism economics

20. Conclusion • The basic aim is to perform objective, systematic, logical, and substantive research. Tourism is a complex phenomenon, and therefore, the research of tourism must utilize all the disciplinary approaches that will be most useful in solving problems and in providing new information.