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Visitor attitude is fundamental to destination selection in the tourism literature. Yet, there remains a notable dearth of critical reviews to assess the current status of knowledge on the topic. This study, therefore, seeks to map and critically evaluate the state of visitor attitudinal research to set the agenda for future scholarly enquiry. A review of journal articles on the topic in four leading tourism journals was undertaken. To critically explore the literature and identify research trends, a paradigm funnel approach was used. The findings demonstrate that most studies on the topic are based on empirical research and specific theories, most notably the contact model and theory of planned behaviour. However, few publications apply analytical methods and innovative ontological and epistemological approaches. This paper provides recommendations for future studies to advance visitor attitudinal research, advocating for the use of innovative methods and theoretical approaches in parent sub-disciplines, particularly psychology.

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Dept Tourism, Sport & Hot Mgmt, Griffith Business School, The quest for authentic experiences has been evidenced in modern society, either as a pursuit for product purchases, leisure experiences, or true self. Many studies have investigated authenticity and attempted to operationalise this complex concept in several ways. While being well examined since the 1970s by tourism researchers such as MacCannell (1973, 1976) and Cohen (1979), scholarly interest in authenticity remains prevalent in current hospitality and tourism research. In the dining context, the extant literature has only studied authenticity from the dimensions of the cultural/ethnic theme displayed, the food, and the servicescape, lacking a multi-dimensional approach for understanding authenticity in dining experiences. Nevertheless, a small number of studies have started considering dining experiences as a product, which directs research attention to the backstage role of the producer-organisation in constructing authenticity cues. Delivering authentic experiences in restaurants has moved beyond the core product itself (the food), and increasingly demands the producerorganisation to project its own true qualities to co-construct these dining experiences. This thesis attempts to offer a comprehensive understanding of consumers’ perceptions of authenticity in dining experiences. In doing so, it also conceptualises authenticity as a multidimensional notion by incorporating conceptualisations of authenticity from various disciplines. Following this line of argument, the overarching proposition of the thesis is that authenticity is a multi-dimensional concept, encompassing Authenticity of the Other, Authenticity of the Producer, and Authenticity of the Self. The thesis was guided by three interrelated research objectives to address the proposition. A three-phase mixed-methods design was adopted to fulfil the research objectives and a dataset of over a million online reviews was scraped from a popular restaurant review platform, which was subsequently sampled and

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Dept Tourism, Sport & Hot Mgmt, Griffith Business School, Visitor attitude is a critical component that affects potential tourists’ decision making and, ultimately, destination choice. Tourism marketers seek to influence prospective visitors’ attitudes through reinforcing existing associations with the destination or creating new associations. In addition, marketers use persuasive marketing stimuli to affect associations with the destination. In particular, the design or characteristics of marketing stimuli such as the perceived credibility and emotive aspects exert a significant impact on potential tourists’ attitudes towards, and associations with, the destination. Furthermore, the characteristics of marketing messages can influence tourists’ cognitive and affective evaluations of a place, confidence in and consideration of a holiday destination. Social psychologists believe that message characteristics influence attitude via three dimensions of thinking: the amount of thought; valence of thinking; and thought confidence. The assertion is that the cognitive engagement with a message and the favourability of thoughts, along with an individual’s confidence in their thoughts predict attitude. However, tourism scholars have investigated only the first two dimensions of thinking: the amount and valence of thoughts. Therefore, the role of thought confidence has been understudied in the tourism context. Thought confidence forms part of the self-validation hypothesis, which asserts that thought generation is not enough to influence attitude, rather people need to feel confident in their thinking (Petty, Briñol & Tormala, 2002). Although social psychologists have examined the influence of a number of variables on attitude, the role of emotion, and specifically emotional arousal, is not well discussed in the self-validation hypothesis literature. This thesis aims to fill the gap in the tourism and social psychology literature through adapting the main elements of previous theories of attitude – notably the elaboration likelihood m

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Dept Tourism, Sport & Hot Mgmt, Griffith Business School, Nation brands are a formidable yet lucrative source of destination brands. Destinations differentiate themselves through unique attributes that people hold in memory. These mental representations move beyond cognitive attributes and include experiential and emotional based attributes. This research develops a destination brand meaning model incorporating people's perceptions, feelings and beliefs about the brand. Brand meaning is fluid and dynamic, and is associated with the mental representation people have about the brand. A classic brand association approach employed which revealed the prominent associations related to a destination brand. Early research focused on cognitive associations to a place, and only recently, the literature has considered the significance of experiential and affective or emotional attributes of destination brands. Since brand meaning is about the mental representation that people have in mind about a brand, this research explores and measures the cognitive, experiential and emotional associations of locals and non-locals and their intentions to recommend and to re-visit the destination. Three research questions were examined in two stages, including, RQ1) What are the cognitive, experiential and emotional attributes of a destination brand? RQ2) What is the relationship between cognitive, experiential and emotional attributes and how this in turn affects locals’ and non-locals’ intentions to recommend the destination? RQ3) What is the relationship between cognitive, experiential and emotional attributes and how this in turn affects non-locals’ intentions to re-visit the destination?. This research adapted a two-stage research employing qualitative methods in stage one and quantitative methods in stage two of the research in the context of Oman as a Middle Eastern nation. This research identified four key themes for the cognitive-based images, including political stability and peacefulness, people, nature, and heritage and traditions. Also

This paper is about the position of workforce and employment considerations within the sustainable tourism narrative. The paper aims to address the relative neglect of this area within the discourse of sustainable tourism and highlights references to the workforce within the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The discussion follows the emerging field of sustainable human resource management and the contribution that this can make to meeting both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to enhancing the recognition of workforce and employment issues within the related debate in tourism. The body of the paper highlights examples of key dimensions of work and employment across varied tourism contexts, where sustainability is of increasing consequence and significance. The paper concludes by drawing together the implications of these “mini-cases” and locating them within key principles of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.