Does Travel Bring Meaning in Life?Study on the Meaning-making Process in Tourism Context
Meaning is fundamental to human life.Positive psychology regards having a meaningful life as the pinnacle of well-being,claiming that meaning has a more profound and enduring impact than positive emotions.Nowadays,many individuals use travel as a means of momentarily detaching from their everyday worries and pursuing life's meaning.Existing studies have explored the positive outcomes of tourism activities in such aspects as subjective well-being,personal growth,and work creativity.However,empirical studies related to the meaning in life are limited.The process of meaning-making in the tourism context is still unclear and there is a scarcity of studies on the relationship and interaction process between tourism activities and meaning in life.To make a scientific explanation for the phenomenon that people exploring meaning in life through travel,this paper collected travel notes and online community Q&As pertinent to the research topic.Grounded theory was adopted to conduct coding analysis.This paper built a model of the meaning-making process in the tourism context,which contains one core category,6 main categories and 15 corresponding categories,and argued that the process of meaning construction in the tourism context is essentially a moment of enlightenment in the tourism world.The findings are as follows.1)Embodied practice is the source of meaning in life.Tourists find meaning in their lives through the interaction and integration of their bodies and environment.Meaning-making is not just a simple mental process,but rather a constructive process based on the interaction between body,mind,and environment.The coding results showed that the main elements of embodied practice include physical movement,sensory engagement,mixed feelings,interpersonal interaction,cultural blending,immersive experience,and body-mind integrity.2)Self-transcendence,a rare moment in daily life,often happens during travel.Tourists feel a connection to a higher reality when interacting and connecting with nature,appreciating artworks,and focusing on society,during which their sense of self fades away.Self-transcendence can liberate people from negative emotions and broaden their perspective to comprehend the meaning in life.3)Self-reflection plays a crucial role in the search for meaning in life.Through self-reflection,tourists associate travel experiences with their life events and cultivate a profound understanding of the world and the real self.4)Self-identification is an important pathway for tourists to experience meaning in life.People can find themselves and develop a strong sense of self-identity in the tourism world.Self-identification enhances tourists'personal values and allows them to establish purposes and goals in their lives.With clear life goals and purposes,they can experience a life rich in meaning.5)Returning to their regular lives,tourists can reconstruct the meaning in life through recollection and reflection,transform their lives,and form a more motivated and optimistic outlook on life.At a theoretical level,this study provides a fresh perspective on understanding the positive impact of tourism activities and puts forward an innovative theoretical model to explain the meaning-making process in the tourism context.At the practical level,this study encourages people to actively search for meaning in their lives and provides theoretical support for the integration of tourism and positive psychological adjustment methods.
meaning in lifeembodied practiceself-transcendenceself-reflectionself-identification
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