Tourism motivation: A complex adaptive system

Abstract

This article discusses the history and status quo of traditional tourism motivation theories as well as their shortcomings. By adopting a collective approach to motivation, this study proposes a framework that examines tourism motivations from a complex adaptive system's perspective. To conduct this study, the destination-motivation semantic system was designed as a bipartite scale-free network that takes in inputs such as values, costs, benefits, experiences, reasons to avoid/approach, attitudes, and expectations, and delivers the outputs of motivational force (valence) and destination utility. Next, by employing expectancy and utility theories and applying the principles of information theory, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics, several appraisals were developed to determine the system's state, structure, and functionality. Finally, a toy model that presents the empirical proof of the proposed framework is depicted.