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Tourism related stress has recently been revealed as an issue for tourism host community residents. Prior studies have relied on directly asking residents if tourism caused them stress, resulting i...

Tourists are flooded with travel options making competition fierce within their consideration sets. While most research emphasizes the functional attributes of destinations, as narcissism becomes more normalized, it is of increasing interest to examine the influence socially symbolic factors have on tourist decision making. Therefore, this study sought to examine the efficacy of four different socially symbolic predictors of travel—social norms, social self-concept (actual and ideal), and social return—for predicting a person's likelihood to travel to Cuba across three time horizons (1 year, 5 years, and 10 years). Results from a panel of 785 U.S. travelers found social norms to be the best predictor of travel across all three time horizons with social return also being significant across all time horizons. Implications to destination marketing are discussed such as some socially symbolic variables being easier to operationalize in marketing campaigns compared to others (e.g. social return vs. social norms).

The purpose of this study is to examine the feasibility of a social networking website on promoting physical activity in an ethnically diverse group of adults. Participants were recruited from English classes at an urban adult education center. Initial measurements included height, weight, and a study-specific survey about exercise and social media use. Participants were invited to join a social networking website as part of an 8-week intervention to promote physical activity. Feasibility of the intervention was determined by analysis of the website use and post-intervention focus groups. Eighteen individuals completed baseline testing and were invited to join the social networking group (4 males, 14 females, 35 ± 13 years of age, mean ± standard deviation). Only six study participants (all women) joined the social networking group. Website visits significantly decreased from the first month to the second month, but participants spent significantly more time per visit during the second compared to the fir...