Process studies of tourists' decision-making: the riches beyond variance studies

Abstract

We discuss the paucity of rich decision-making models in tourism. Following a review ofdecision-making approaches, in which we include the emerging paradigm of naturalisticdecision-making, we find that the literature on tourists’ decision-making is dominated by‘variance’ studies of tourists’ decisions by causal analysis of independent variables thatexplain choices by tourists. We contend that this is at odds with the ontology of decisionmakingas a process, a deeper understanding of which may only be generated through processstudies of tourists’ decision-making. This typically involves narrating the emergent actionsand activities by which individual or collective endeavours unfold. We discuss theimplications of this in the context of building and testing naturalistic models and simulationsof tourists’ decision-making.