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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5835-6005

AccessType

Open Access Dissertation

Document Type

dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Program

Hospitality & Tourism Management

Year Degree Awarded

2022

Month Degree Awarded

September

First Advisor

Muzzo S. Uysal

Second Advisor

Albert G. Assaf

Third Advisor

Lisa A. Keller

Subject Categories

Tourism and Travel

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the topic of quality of life (QoL) in tourism has gained momentum and generated a plethora of studies focusing on the effects of tourism on the QoL and wellbeing of visitors, local communities, and industry workers. Despite the rich literature concentrating on the probable antecedents of subjective QoL among important tourist stakeholders, there are a few studies that investigate the relationship between performance and objective QoL measures. In these three essays, the link between traditional performance measures, widely used to assess the performance of tourism destinations, and objective QoL indicators is explored. The first essay tests the reciprocal relationship between objective QoL indicators and traditional destination performance measures over time. The key purpose of the study is to assess the extent to which QoL and destination performance indicators share a common variance, implying that there is an overlap between the two. The study results suggest that there is a strong interaction between the two sets and thus, new measures of destination performance can be developed by incorporating QoL indicators. Essay 2 extends these findings and focuses on investigating the QoL drivers of tourism demand in addition to traditional explanatory variables such as income and price constraints. Essay 2 demonstrates that tourism demand is shaped by a wider set of QoL factors, that go beyond the traditional economic determinants. Specifically, a QoL index that encompasses education, health, and stability was confirmed to have a significant impact on both outbound and inbound tourism demand. The present research offers a novel conceptualization of tourism demand, suggesting a more comprehensive outlook, moving beyond a mere economic perspective. Finally, Essay 3 develops a tourism destination frontier that incorporates QoL indicators. Based on QoL and tourism related inputs and outputs, a frontier model is used to rank the performance of each destination in the dataset. The study compares between two models, one that incorporates QoL indicators and one that does not. The research findings show that in general, performance scores change when incorporating the QoL indicators, demonstrating further support for the novel, combined measures of tourism performance that include QoL indicators.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/31043354

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