| Description |
Mainstream tourism and recreation have long focused on two basic goals: customer satisfaction and economic viability. For most tourism and recreation providers, producing a satisfied customer leads to earning more money, allowing them to continue with their operations. Yet, there is a small, experimental, but growing part of the tourism industry that has begun to focus on different goals, mainly delightedness and personal transformation. Some of the most well known programs in this sector of tourism are study abroad programs, Birthright, and "voluntourism." Delightedness and personal transformation are strongly connected as indicated by Maslow's concept of "peak-experiences." "Peak-experiences" are brief, unpredictable, and intense experiences that often produce important, long-lasting transformations within an individual. Without an experience producing delightedness within an individual, it is unlikely a "peak-experience" will occur. Unlike flow experiences, which can be self initiated, "peak-experiences" are highly unpredictable, thus facilitating these experiences through study abroad, Birthright, and "voluntourism" programs can be challenging. One tool that has not been strongly investigated as a facilitator for "peak-experiences" is vivid information in the form of strong, simple, positive messages. Vivid information has been successful in producing behavioral changes in areas of consumerism, marketing, and health messaging. If vivid information is successful in these areas, it is possible it could produce more significant behavioral transformations within an individual. In order to investigate this potential connection, a Chinese cultural event was created and observed. This event consisted of four activities, cooking, language, zodiac and tai chi, and was evaluated to investigate whether vivid information, objectified as cognitive elaborations, was correlated with delightedness and behavioral change. Forty individuals took part in the cultural event. Thirty individuals were designated as participants, and took part in each of the four activities. Ten individuals were designated group leaders, and helped to set up and run the entire event. All participants were required to respond to three different surveys: Rings' Life Changes Inventory (LCI), which provided insight into behavioral change and transformation, a 100 point delightedness scale; and writing down three thoughts after each activity that were utilized to quantify vivid information. The results indicated that cognitive elaborations positively correlated with delightedness, which is in line with Maslow's assertion that "peak-experiences" are always accompanied by delightedness. Cognitive elaborations did not significantly correlate with behavioral change, demonstrating that the Chinese cultural event may not have been powerful enough to produce behavioral change. |
