Social Worlds as a Framework for Event and Travel Careers

Abstract

Social world theory provides a framework to examine the event and travel-related careers of special-interest tourists. Social worlds can be examined across four dimensions, namely, actors, events, practices, and formal organizations with potential links to travel behavior. Event-travel careers are hypothesized as consisting of evolving motivations, preferences, and patterns of travel— including event and destination choices. To inform this approach, qualitative analysis was undertaken by passive netnography consisting of a systematic analysis of material posted on blogs by food lovers and people engaged in amateur distance running, mountain biking, and ballroom dancing. Observed differences between social worlds are analyzed with reference to competitive versus noncompetitive emphases, solo versus group activity, skill levels, divisibility of the pursuit into subpursuits, the existence of portfolios of related activities that engage participants, and the degree to which commercialization occurs. The article concludes with a set of propositions for guiding future research and theory development.