Tourism Studies

The phenomenon of tourism was discovered more generally by the social sciences in the 1970s, but there are examples of social science studies of tourism as early as the 1920s. In many contexts, tourism is seen as part of the broader concept of leisure and recreation. In this area, studies focus on people's behavior and how their leisure interests and recreational needs are satisfied.

Tourism as a concept includes geographical location and social structures, economic activities and human behavior. For example, research on tourism involves an in-depth understanding of the role of tourism in society, the characteristics and impacts of businesses providing tourism services, why people travel and how they behave, and the impacts of tourism.

Tourism research takes a holistic approach where physical, geographical, economic, social and cultural aspects interact. But tourism is not an isolated field of study. The way the world works and events in the world around us have been shown to play a crucial role in the opportunities and conditions of tourism and the tourism industry. It is therefore important to be able to place tourism in a broader perspective, using knowledge from different social sciences. Researching tourism is therefore done from a variety of scientific perspectives and the theoretical basis comes from a variety of other disciplines such as anthropology, economics, business administration, history, geography, sociology and psychology. Tourism science is an inter-disciplinary scientific subject where collaboration between different social science areas contributes to the development and content of the subject.

The research also includes a variety of sub-areas, not least because of the many theoretical fields that are rooted in various social science disciplines. Some examples of areas are; location and mobility, transport, destinations, political governance, customer behaviour, attitudes, motives, quality, service and hospitality, decision-making processes, digitalization and technology, sustainability, value creation, satisfaction and loyalty, entrepreneurship and business, product development, innovations and experiences, management and leadership, marketing, segmentation, distribution and sales, networks, clusters, system structures, organization and relationships, economic effects, societal effects, development, regional development, planning, nature, culture, events, social community, employment and work, landscape, identity, supply and demand, statistics, risk, crisis and conflicts.

At Mid Sweden University, research in tourism science is mainly concentrated on destination development, the importance of digitalization for tourism, events, nature tourism, marketing and branding, popular culture tourism, economic effects, business and entrepreneurship, experiences and behaviours.