Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Dr. Ye Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Marketing, Florida Atlantic University. Her research interest lies in the integration of positive psychology practices into the design of transformative tourism/hospitality experiences, computational modeling and cognitive intervention of tourist choice behavior, strategic hospitality service management, and also tourism/hospitality sustainability.

Dr. Jie Gao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Marketing, Montclair State University. Her research interests focus on consumer decision-making with an emphasis on consumers’ emotions and wellbeing in travel and events industry and also applying data mining techniques into her research.

Dr. Peter Ricci is aClinical Associate Professor and Director of Hospitality and Tourism Management Program, Florida Atlantic University. He is a hospitality industry veteran with over 20 years of managerial experience in segments including food service, lodging, incentive travel, and destination marketing. His research interest lies in HR management.

Abstract (150 Words)

Despite the growing interest in exploring the potential of tourism in benefiting individual long-term eudaimonic wellbeing, limited studies indeed investigated into the approaches to expand such benefits, and they mostly focus on special types of tourism. This study proposes character-strength employment as a promising direction to fulfill the potential of regular tourism activities to foster individual eudaimonic wellbeing, without compromising the hedonic travel pleasure. Adopting experimental design and mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses, this study supports the potential of strength-based travel design for wellbeing enhancement, by revealing: 1) the unique advantage of regular tourism activities in cultivating transcendence- and humanity-related strengthsthat are less likely employed in daily settings, and 2) the positive association of after-trip hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing with transcendence-related strengthsthat are uniquely cultivated in tourism. Practically, it informs the incorporation of strength cultivation in travel design and marketing to optimize wellbeing benefits from tourism.

2019 TTRA cover letter.docx (21 kB)
Cover Letter

short abstract_042319.docx (63 kB)
Short Abstract

Share

COinS
 

The Potential of Tourism for Benefiting Individual Short-term and Long-term Wellbeing: A Character-strength-based Exploration

Despite the growing interest in exploring the potential of tourism in benefiting individual long-term eudaimonic wellbeing, limited studies indeed investigated into the approaches to expand such benefits, and they mostly focus on special types of tourism. This study proposes character-strength employment as a promising direction to fulfill the potential of regular tourism activities to foster individual eudaimonic wellbeing, without compromising the hedonic travel pleasure. Adopting experimental design and mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses, this study supports the potential of strength-based travel design for wellbeing enhancement, by revealing: 1) the unique advantage of regular tourism activities in cultivating transcendence- and humanity-related strengthsthat are less likely employed in daily settings, and 2) the positive association of after-trip hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing with transcendence-related strengthsthat are uniquely cultivated in tourism. Practically, it informs the incorporation of strength cultivation in travel design and marketing to optimize wellbeing benefits from tourism.