Encyclopedia of Sociology Vol

TIME USE RESEARCH

Hungarian counterparts. For employed American women, housework lasted one hour less, and leisure lasted one and a half hours more than was the case for employed Hungarian women. Finally, household work among unemployed American women required two hours less time and leisure benefits lasted two hours longer than was the case for the corresponding group in Hungary. The uneven availability of household appliances and unequal access to leisure amenities (in particular, television) were the causes of these differences in lifestyles. In addition, the table reveals well-known inequalities in gender and employment status. If one combines the time invested in market work and housework, it appears, though less significantly in the west than in the east, that women in the labor force contributed a considerably larger share of work and enjoyed much less leisure than did employed men.

Table 2 shows that gender differences are clearly implicated in the discrepancies in the number of hours of economic activity and housework per week between men and women, indicating that there are analogous patterns of inequality in developing countries such as Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. In these countries, women are more likely to spend their time in subsistence activities, whereas men tend to have a monopoly of paid jobs. In addition, women’s time investment in housework is six times that of men in Bangladesh and three times that of men in the other two countries. However, the gap in overall work hours, though disadvantaging women, is less evident. In fact, in Bangladesh they contribute 54 percent of the total micro-productive time input, in India 55 percent, and in Nepal 58 percent.

Data from the French national survey (Insee 1989) on the effect of cumulative social roles among women are much more analytic. In France, for mothers with husbands under 45 years of age and at least one child younger than 25 years old, increasing from one child to three and more children means, if they are unemployed, an increase of one hour and fifteen minutes of house work and, if they are employed, an increase of fifty-two minutes. Where does this extra time come from? In the case of especially pressured employed mothers, the time investment in human capital in the form of caring for additional children implies a

reduction of one hour and thirteen minutes in the duration of market work, including a seven-mi- nute reduction in free time and fourteen minutes less of sleep. Especially for women with more than one child, this negatively affects their competitive position in the professional world. Data such as these should be of interest to policymakers.

This example also shows that considerable caution is required in interpreting time use data. In general, estimates of differential time allocations for men and women in certain activities do not reflect only gender differences. Demographic variables, especially family composition, the structure of the labor force, and the availability of household help, intervene in causal links between gender and time use. Particular attention must be paid to these influences in longitudinal analyses such as that of Gershuny and Robinson (1988), which analyzed U.S. and British time-budget data over three decades. Statistically controlling for female labor force participation, male unemployment, and declining family sizes, those authors concluded that in the 1980s, women did substantially less housework while men did a little more than in the 1960s. In another study that analyzed data from repeated surveys in eight Western countries, a general reduction in time dedicated to all kinds of work was found, along with a convergence of time use models among males and females and a growing international similarity in the patterns of the division of time between work and leisure (Gershuny 1992).

In recent decades, considerable progress has been made in representing the multidimensionality of time use phenomena because official data, instead of regarding samples of randomly chosen individuals, have been collected from all members of households. This has made it possible to observe how husbands’ time management affects their wives and vice versa and to determine what it means for families if both husband and wife are employed and if children come into the family nucleus.

In Table 3, pertinent data on couples from the national time use survey conducted in Germany in 1990–1991 are presented. It shows time use models for types of families defined by employment status and the presence of children. Assuming the operation of compensatory mechanisms, it also

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Time Use in Three Southern Asian Countries (1982–1992)

		Hours per week of economic activity				Hours per	Total work
	Social					week of	hours
Countries:	Groups:		Paid	Subsistence	Total	housework	per week
Bangladesh	Ages 5+
	Women	14		8	22	31	53
	Men	38		3	41	5	46
India	Ages 18+
	Women	28		7	35	34	69
	Men	43		4	47	10	57
Nepal	Ages 15+
	Women	18		17	35	42	77
	Men	29		12	41	15	56

Table 2

SOURCE: United Nations, The World’s Women 1995: Trends and Statistics, Chart 5.3, 1995, New York.

takes the weekly rhythm of time use into account by distinguishing workdays (Monday to Friday) from weekends (Saturday and Sunday).

One model regards more traditional couples in which only husbands are employed and wives do most of the housework. Husbands increase their market work when there are children, but regardless of the presence of children, they defend their daily leisure and contribute to housework mostly on weekends. The other model concerns couples in which both partners are employed. In this case, it is not surprising that the wives’ market work is considerably shorter than the husbands’, but what is important is that in the presence of children, both partners increase their market work by more than one hour each. The housework of mothers increases on all days, whereas fathers limit increases in their domestic chores to the weekends.

From a micro perspective, what the German example shows are the implications of decisions made within the family. Here the family is seen as the institutional arena where partners search for a suitable compromise in their interlocking role definitions. From a macro perspective, the implications of gendered time use arrangements for the changing division of labor and the growing interaction between the market sector and the household sector are important. Sociologists and economists have often criticized the fact that mostly female domestic and caring activities, mostly male ‘‘do-it-yourself’’ repair initiatives, and voluntary

and other socially useful work done by both men and women go unrecorded in labor statistics and national accounts. These are ‘‘productive activities’’ insofar as they can be delegated to persons other than those who benefit from them.

Table 4 shows a selection of the results of a United Nations Development Programme analysis of a posteriori standardized time budget data from the most recent national surveys conducted in fourteen different countries (Goldschmidt-Clermont and Pagnossin-Aligisakis 1995). This analysis distinguishes between market oriented System of National Accounts (SNA) activities considered in the UN System of National Accounts and non-SNA activities, and introduces the necessary controls for the demographic structures of the populations.

Despite the nonhomogeneous social structures and value systems of France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, everywhere statistically unrecorded (non-SNA) activities absorb about as much labor time as do recorded (SNA) activities. Furthermore, total economic time allocations (SNA plus non-SNA) tend to be equal among men and women. Although this demonstates social equality in general terms, it can be seen that very strong gendered divisions of tasks prevail in all cases. In fact, in these four countries, women contribute only one-third of total market-oriented productive time, whereas they contribute two-thirds of total non-market-oriented productive time.

The availability of comparable time budget data is a prerequisite for official statistics that aim

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Workday and Week-End Time Use of Husbands and Wives in German Households defined by the Employment Status of the Couple and the Presence of Children in the Family (1990–1991).

		Husbands					Wives
	Only husband employed		Both employed			Only husband employed		Both employed
Activity
	Monday-	Saturday-	Monday-	Saturday-		Monday-	Saturday-	MondaySaturday-
categories	Friday	Sunday	Friday	Sunday		Friday	Sunday	Friday Sunday

				Without children
Personal needs	9:43	12:02	10:01	12:02	11:40	12:44	10:39	12:16
Market work and study	8:23	1:51	7:11	1:37	0:13	–	4:26	0:37
Household work	2:02	3:05	2:30	3:05	6:58	4:53	4:51	4:46
Free time	3:36	6:46	4:01	6:58	4:57	6:14	3:52	6:13
Other activities	0:16	0:16	0:17	0:18	0:12	0:09	0:12	0:08
Total:	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00

				With children
Personal needs	9:25	11:43	9:22	11:39	10:24	11:31	9:46	11:42
Market work and study	8:44	1:16	8:49	1:23	0:24	–	5:36	0:45
Household work	2:16	3:59	2:23	3:49	8:55	6:18	5:23	5:45
Free time	3:22	6:37	3:15	6:47	3:57	5:51	3:06	5:42
Other activities	0:13	0:25	0:11	0:22	0:20	0:20	0:09	0:06
Total:	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00	24:00

Table 3

SOURCE: Adapted from Statistisches Bundesamt, Die Zeitverwendung der Bevoelkerung, Tabellenband I, 1995, Wiesbaden.

to include the production value of nonmonetarized activities, through ‘‘satellite accounts,’’ in their quantitative frameworks. The most recent national time use surveys have been conducted with these applications in mind.

THE RELEVANCE OF TIME-BUDGET DATA

SETS FOR SOCIAL POLICY

Sociologists have often been skeptical about the utility of time-budget research. Time budgets are thought to provide data that are ‘‘broad but shallow’’ (Converse 1972, p. 46) and offer no more than static, tendentially commonsense descriptions of only the manifest aspects of everyday life. From a theoretical point of view, it is argued that there is a lack of explanatory hypotheses and relevant concepts that could bring norms, experiences, attitudes, and values to the fore. On the methodological side, the main criticism is that classification schemes of activities are imprecise, are unevenly general or detailed, and have barely changed since the 1920s (Pronovost 1989, pp. 78–80). Implicit in these observations is the dilemma Szalai faced earlier: whether priority should be assigned to the

testing of hypotheses or to multipurpose database construction. With the latter option comes the question of how to reconcile, in designing the studies, cross-national and longitudinal comparability and adherence to sociocultural settings and historically changing conditions.

Time-budget research is applied research that has increasingly been aimed at the design and evaluation of social policy. Its relevance in this context derives from the fact that in modern affluent societies, citizens often value scarce time more than material or monetary resources; thus, time use rationalization and efficient time management in the personal, family, and public sphere have become matters of general concern. Contingencies curtailing time use evidently are distributed unequally in the social world. For instance, health checks in public institutions often involve waiting times that private medical care does not, and not owning a means of transportation makes long commuting times unavoidable. Hence, social policies and their provisions try to make circumstances or opportunities more equal for everyone. Parttime employment, flexible worktimes, and compressed workweeks have been introduced mostly for pressured working mothers with small chil-

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Distribution of Economic Time in Four Countries Between SNA and Non-SNA Activities, by Gender. Indices Showing Unequal Participation of Men and Women in Each Group of Activities

	Men	Women	Men and Women	Inequality Index
	(M)	(F)	(M+F)	I=F/(M+F)
France (1985–1986)
SNA activities	4:00	2:10	6:10	35%
Non SNA activities	2:28	4:59	7:27	67%
Total	6:50	7:09	13:37	52%
Germany (1991–1992)
SNA activities	4:28	2:12	6:40	33%
Non SNA activities	2:53	5:08	8:01	64%
Total	7:21	7:20	14:41	50%
Great Britain (1985)
SNA activities	4:39	2:34	7:13	36%
Non SNA activities	2:12	4:19	6:41	65%
Total	6:51	6:53	13:54	50%
United States (1985)
SNA activities	4:31	2:47	7:18	38%
Non-SNA activities	2:37	4:46	7:23	65%
Total	7:08	7:33	14:41	51%

Table 4

SOURCE: Adapted from L. Goldschmidt-Clermont and E. Pagnossinn-Aligisakis, Measures of Unrecorded Economic Activities in Fourteen Countries, Occasional Papers no. 20, 1995, New York: UNDP.

dren. Shop-opening hours and office schedules have been changed to permit effective coordination and a better reconciliation of tasks. The effectiveness these measures can be monitored with the help of time-budget procedures.

The complexity of time-budget data sets has often been insufficiently exploited. Initially this was due to limitations in handling enormous data sets, but increased technological resources and new multivariate statistical techniques have opened new frontiers. Almost exclusive attention has been given to average durations and frequencies of primary activities, but the study of configurations emerging from an association of these activities with other contemporaneous activities promises a better understanding of modern time regimes. Until now, not much research has been done on routinized rhythms or the strategic sequencing of activities. Also, the collaborative or conflicting interface of the various schedules of family members, the reconstruction of networks of participative personal contacts (a topic of great significance in regard to lonely children, the ill, and the elderly), and the relationship of the use of urban spaces to

time use (a problem studied by human geographers) are all interesting areas for future research because of the greater availability of important data sets.

Activity classifications will have to undergo critical study to better reflect changes in the activity patterns of everyday life. Statistical offices are presently reconceptualizing their taxonomies. Paid work might be broken down into its constituent parts and examined analytically, but other activities need redefinition. For example, some kinds of domestic work have been absorbed by the market; care activities now regard the elderly more than children; dealing with service bureaucracies has become a time-consuming task; there is a new spectrum of voluntary forms of participation at the social, political, and cultural levels; and leisure behavior has changed in relationship with new media.

However, the problem is not just a technical one regarding exclusively descriptive coding schemes. Time use data assume importance only when they provide a valid epistemological key for the interpretation of social change. As has already been

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pointed out, earlier lines of research identified two central components of time use: market work and leisure. Today, time use studies based on data from household samples may help identify other valid criteria of time use to better understand how families cope with growing structural unemployment and increasing social insecurity.

REFERENCES

Bevans, George Esdras 1913 How Workingmen Spend Their Spare Time. New York: Columbia University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre 1963 ‘‘La Société Traditionelle: Attitude à l’Égard du Temps et Conduite Économique.’’

Sociologie du Travaille, 5:24–44.

Converse, Philip E. 1968 ‘‘Time Budgets’’ In David L. Sills, ed., The International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, vol. 16. New York: Macmillan—Free Press.

Elias, Norbert 1988 Time. New York: Basil Blackwell.

Gershuny, Jonathan 1992 ‘‘La répartition du temps dans les sociétés post-industrielles.’’ Futuribles, MaiJuin, 215–226.

———, and John P. Robinson 1988 ‘‘Historical Changes in the Household Division of Labor.’’ Demography 25(4):537–552.

Goldschmidt-Clemont, Luisella, and Elisabetta PagnossinAligisakis 1995 Measures of Unrecorded Economic Activities in Fourteen Countries, Occasional papers no. 20. New York: UNDP.

Harvey, Andrew S., Alexander Szalai, David Elliott, Philip J. Stone, and Susan M. Clark 1984 Time Budget Research: An ISSC Workbook in Comparative Analysis. Frankfurt: Campus.

——— 1993 ‘‘Guidelines for Time Use Data Collection.’’ Social Indicator Research 30:197–228.

INSEE 1989 ‘‘Les Emplois du Temps des Français.’’

Economie et Statistique 223.

Jahoda, Marie, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Hans Zeisel 1971

Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community. Chicago: Aldine (German orig., 1933).

Juster, F. Thomas 1985 ‘‘The Validity and Quality of Time Use Estimates Obtained from Recall Diaries.’’ In F. T. Juster and F. P. Stafford, eds., Time, Goods, and Well-Being. Ann Arbor: Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan.

Kurtz M.-F. D. 1984 ‘‘Les Budget-Temps: Réflexion Épistémologique,’’ L’année Sociologique 34:9–27.

NHK 1991 Japanese Time Use in 1990. Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, Public Opinion Research Division.

Niemi, Iris 1993 ‘‘Systematic Error in Behavioural Measurement: Comparing Results from Interview and Time Budget Studies.’’ Social Indicators Research

30:229–244.

Przeworski, Adam, and Henri Teune 1970 The Logic of

Comparative Inquiry. New York–London: Wiley

Interscience.

Pronovost, Gilles 1989 ‘‘The Sociology of Time.’’ Current Sociology 37(3):1–129.

Scheuch, Erwin K. 1992 ‘‘The Time-Budget Interview.’’ In Alexander Szalai, ed., The Use of Time. The Hague– Paris: Mouton.

Sorokin, P. A., and C. Q. Berger 1939 Time-Budgets and Human Behavior. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Statistisches Bundesamt 1995 Die Zeitverwendung der Bevoelkerung, Tabellenband I. Wiesbaden.

Stone Philip J. 1972 ‘‘The Analysis of Time-Budget Data.’’ In Alexander Szalai, ed., The Use of Time. The Hague–Paris: Mouton.

Sue, Roger 1994 Temps et Ordre Social. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Szalai, Alexander, ed. 1972 The Use of Time: Daily Activities of Urban and Suburban Populations in Twelve Countries. The Hague–Paris: Mouton.

———1977 ‘‘The Organization and Execution of CrossNational Survey Research Projects.’’ In Alexander Szalai and Riccardo Petrella, eds., Cross-National Comparative Survey Research. Oxford, UK: Pergamon.

———1984 ‘‘The Concept of Time Budget Research.’’ In Andrew S. Harvey et al., eds., Time Budget Research. Frankfurt: Campus.

United Nations 1995 The World’s Women 1995: Trends and Statistics. No. E.95. XVII.2.

Zerubavel, Eviatar 1982 ‘‘The Standardization of Time. A Sociohistorical Perspective.’’ American Journal of Sociology 88 (1):1–23.

ELKE KOCH-WESER AMMASSARI

TOURISM

Tourism is an economic phenomenon with important sociocultural implications that acquired a fundamental significance in the last decades of the twentieth century. It is one of the economic sectors with the highest rates of growth, together with transportation, communications, and the computer industry, with which it works in a synergitic way.

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According to a classic definition, tourism can be identified in the complex of relations and manifestations that rise from the travel and stay of foreigners when the stay is temporary and is not motivated by a lucrative occupation (Hunziker and Krapf 1942). ‘‘Foreigners’’ are persons who do not reside habitually in the zone in which the tourist activity is carried out; depending on wether the zone of residence is in the same state, one can distinguish between internal tourism and international tourism.

Other elements have to be considered in distinguishing fully-fledged tourism from similar activities. First, two ‘‘fundamental actors’’ have to be dealt with. On one side, there are tourists (active tourism), who decide to undertake this activity because of several motivations. This is one of the primary topics in the sociopsychological analysis of tourism. On the other side, there is passive (or receptive) tourism constituted by the technical and socioeconomic structures that exist in the zones of reception with the aim of hosting tourists. In modern tourism, a third actor, consisting of agents of tourist intermediation (travel agencies, tour operators, carriers, etc.), has assumed greater importance by connecting the demand for and the supply of tourism. The tourism described here is essentially a mass phenomenon that exists alongside elite tourism, which was the first type to appear.

Merchant writers such as Marco Polo, travelerexplorers, and missionaries, often accompanied by anthropologists and ethnologists, were the forerunners of tourists, but only after the ‘‘Grand Tours’’ of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can one speak of the emergence of the tourist phenomenon. The grand tour was considered a fundamental stage in the formation of young aristocrats and later of the children of the emergent high bourgeoisie. It consisted of a visit to the more centers of the culture of the age, with a predilection for southern Europe, in particular Italy and its remnants of classic culture.

Toward the end of nineteenth century, with the inauguration of the first seaside resorts, tourism began to acquire mass characteristics, a phenomenon that was facilitated by the improvement of transportation systems, especially the extension of the railway network (Urry 1990).

The transformation of elite tourism into a phenomenon that involved wide strata of the popu-

lation did not occur until after the end of World War II and, in the more economically developed countries, the possession of the automobile as an individual and family means of transportation and the expansion of transcontinental and transoceanic flights.

Tourism is therefore facilitated, in addition to the elevation of individual incomes and better tariff conditions, by technical, political, and social factors. It also involves a psychological evolution in society, especially in the richer countries, where it provides an escape from the stresses of city life and the daily routine. A stronger desire for social intercourse has grown along with a desire for physical activity to compensate for a sedentary lifestyle.

Certain forms of travel have a demonstrative scope, since ‘‘to tour,’’ in particular elite tourism but also mass tourism, may be thought of as an expression of one’s prestige and social position.

Urry (1990) introduced the concept of the ‘‘tourist gaze,’’ stating that ‘‘part at least of that experience is to gaze upon or view a set of different scenes, of landscapes or townscapes which are outside of the ordinary’’ (1990, p. 1). As Urry describes it:

1.‘‘tourism is a leisure activity which presupposes its opposite, namely regulated and organized work, . . .

2.tourist relationships arise from a movement of people to, and their stay in, various destinations. This necessarily involves some movement through the space, that is the journey, and a period of stay in a new place or places,

3.the journey and stay are to, and in, sites which are outside the normal places of residence and work. Periods of residence elsewhere are of a short-term and temporary nature, . . .

4.the places gazed upon are for purposes which are not directly connected with the paid work and normally they offer some distinctive contrasts with work (both paid or unpaid);

5.a substantial proportion of the population of modern societies engages in such tourist practices, new socialized forms of

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provision are developed in order to cope with the mass character of the gaze of tourist (as opposed to the individual character of ‘‘travel’’)

6.places are chosen to be gazed upon because there is an anticipation, especially through daydreaming and fantasy, of intense pleasures, either on a different scale or involving different senses from those customarily encountered, . . .

7.the tourist gaze is directed to features of landscape and townscape which separate them off from everyday experience. Such aspects are viewed because they are taken to be in some sense out of the ordi-

nary, . . .

8.the gaze is constructed through signs, and tourism involves the collection of signs,. . .

9.an array of tourist professionals develop who attempt to reproduce ever-new objects of the tourist gaze. . . (Urry 1990, pp. 2–3 passim).

THE DIMENSIONS OF THE PHENOMENON

The modern growth of tourism (Prosser 1994, p. 19) has been referred to ironically by Lodge (1992) as the ‘‘new global religion,’’ and a work on this phenomenon is entitled ‘‘The Golden Hordes’’ (Turner and Ash 1975). Prosser also supplies some data on a ‘‘phenomenon’’ that he describes by using the metaphor of the tsunami: By the mid-1990s, the tourism sector constituted 6 percent of world gross national product and 13 percent of the money spent for consumption and could be defined as the fastest-growing industry. According to the forecasts of the World Tourism Organization, in the year 2005, the tourist industry will involve 40 million persons.

Taking into account only persons who cross their state borders for tourism (perhaps equally important is the internal tourist movement), more recent data show, in approximately a decade, a near doubling of the phenomenon and also indicate that total revenues have increased to three times their original amount (Table 1).

The distribution of tourism in a wide range of countries has occurred in time span of only a few years. Tourism in the industrialized countries, while

Arrivals and Revenues in International

Tourism

Year	Arrivals	Revenue
	($ millions)	($ billions)
1986	339	142
1987	362	175
1988	395	203
1989	427	219
1990	458	266
1991	464	273
1992	503	311
1993	518	318
1994	547	348
1995	566	393
1996	592	423

Table 1

SOURCE:World Tourism Organization.

declining in relative terms, accounts for ever 50 percent of the total, but the share of the developing countries has grown and now accounts for almost a third of the total. The countries of central and eastern Europe still suffer from the backwardness of decades of relative inaccessibility, but after the fall of the Berlin wall, their proportion of the world tourism has grown (Table 2).

France is the leader in tourist presence, followed by the United States and two countries of Mediterranean Europe, Spain and Italy. In fifth place is China, a country only recently opened to international tourism that has a large potential that bas been limited by a deficiency of infrastructure and receptive structures.

The forecasts of an increase of tourism are plausible because some countries of the former communist bloc already play an important role. Other developing countries (e.g., Brazil and South Africa), apart from China, have potential and will be able to play a more important role in international tourism if they stabilize their political and/or economic situation.

There currently is a remarkable concentration of tourist destinations in which the top ten countries together account for over 50 percent of tourism and top twenty countries account for over twothirds (Table 3).

These figures suggest that the market for tourism will grow and become more differentiated, that there will be more specialization and segmentation of that market, and that organized travel

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Percentage Distribution of Tourist

Presences

	1990 (%)	1996 (%)
Industrialized countries	61.5	55.8
Developing countries	28.3	31.0
Central and eastern Europe	10.2	13.2

Table 2

SOURCE: World Tourism Organization.

packages will become more personalized to cope with the desire for greater individual freedom through a modular design of the product (Schwaninger 1989).

THE NATURE OF TOURISM

Mass tourism is the main concern of this article inasmuch as the current growth of the tourism industry essentially has resulted from it. Mass tourism is a ‘‘fickle’’ market in which status-elevating motivations are important. ‘‘If people do not travel, they lose status: travel is the maker of status’’ (Urry 1990, p. 5). The concept of conspicuous consumption (Veblen [1899] 1970) is operative here because in choosing a vacation, one takes into account the attributions of status defined on the basis of the place one visits and the characteristics of the other visitors.

One therefore is dealing with a market that is very sensitive to fashion and changes in values. The relative loss of importance of seaside resorts, which were the preferred destinations at the beginning of mass tourism, can be cited in this regard:

In the post-war period it has been the sun, not the sea, that is presumed to produce health and sexual attractiveness. The ideal body has

come to be viewed as one that is tanned. This viewpoint has been diffused downwards through the social classes with the result that many package holidays present this as almost the reason for going on holiday. . . . Seaside

resorts have also become less distinctive because of the widespread de-industrialization of many towns and cities so that there is less need to escape from them to the contrasting seaside. As the everyday has changed, as towns and cities have become de-industrialized and many have themselves become objects for the tourist gaze, with wave machines and other features of the

beach, so seaside resorts are no longer extraordinary. (Urry 1990, pp. 37–38)

Tourism is therefore a fashion phenomenon that goes through all the typical phases of a product of that type, from discovery and emergence, to increasing popularity, saturation, attenuation of its appeal, and eventually decline. It is sensitive to the relationship between demand and supply, based the on perceptions, expectations, attitudes, and values of people, and therefore is subject to cultural filters:

The various contents and destinations of tourism, from the nineteenth Century to our days, seem to follow a standardized route . . .

They are invented by individuals that live in conditions of originality and marginality in relationship to the ‘world.’ Subsequently they are consecrated by the notables: the monarchs and their families, followed by the artists and the celebrities . . . Finally they are diffused through the capillary imitation of the behavior of one social layer by the immediately inferior one. As soon as a place or a tourist fashion is known, there begins an emulation process that leads quickly to congestion; processes of distinction are then activated by groups that address to other places and invent other activities, reopening a new cycle. The succession of dissemination and invention cycles leads to the need for distinction to introduce more and more far and unusual goals.

(Savelli 1998, pp. 92–93).

One can speak of the ‘‘pleasure periphery,’’ as in the case of the increase of Antarctic tourism (Prosser 1994, p. 22). For this aspect, the model of Plog (1973) is relevant. Plog analyzes the personality of the tourist: Along a continuum, one can go from psycho-centered, expectant subjects preoccupied with the small daily problems and escaping to adventures, to subjects who are as allocentered, confident in themselves, curious, and adventurous. The places visited by these varied subjects are obviously very different. In the survey conducted by Plog among the inhabitants of New York, while the psychocentered subjects do not venture beyond Coney Island, the midcentered travel to Europe and the allocentered do not dare to face the Pacific or Africa.

In dealing with tourism from a socioeconomic point of view, the ‘‘positional goods’’ concept

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International Arrivals by Country, 1996

Country	Thousands of tourists	Country	Thousands of tourists
France	61,500	Austria	16,641
United States	44,791	Germany	15,070
Spain	41,295	Hong Kong	11,700
Italy	35,500	Switzerland	11,097
China	26,055	Portugal	9,900
Great Britain	25,800	Greece	9,725
Mexico	21,732	Russian Federation	9,678
Hungary	20,670	Turkey	7,935
Poland	19,420	Malaysia	7,742
Canada	17,345	Total	430,801
Czech Republic	17,205	World total	591,864

Table 3

SOURCE: World Tourism Organization.

(Hirsh 1978) can be used. This term refers to social goods, services, jobs, positions, and other relations that are scarce or subject to congestion and/or crowding. The competition is zero-sum: When someone consumes these kinds of goods in excess, someone else is forced to consume less. The supply is limited because quality would lessen as a result of quantitative growth.

One also can trace a conflict of interest between the actors described in the first part of this article (tourists, agencies, and the tourism industry in the hosting countries) and environmentalists. Since natural and cultural resources may be irremediably spoiled, there is thus a conflict of interest between present and future generations (Mishan 1969).

Another peculiar characteristic of tourism is that ‘‘almost all the services provided to tourists have to be delivered at the time and place at which they are produced. As a consequence the quality of the social interaction between the provider of the service, such as the waiter, flight attendant or hotel receptionist, and the consumer, is part of the ‘product’ being purchased by the tourist. If aspects of that social interaction are unsatisfactory (the offhand waiter, the unsmiling flight attendant, or the rude receptionist), then what is purchased is in effect a different service product’’ (Urry 1990, p. 40). Production of services for the consumer, in fact, cannot be done entirely behind the scenes, far away from the tourist gaze. Moreover, tourists have high expectations about what they will receive, since the search for the extraordinary is an essential aspect of the choice to travel.

‘‘Spatial fixity’’ is a crucial characteristic of tourist services (Bagguley 1987), and customers are more mobile and now consume tourist services on a global scale. This means that ‘‘part of what is consumed is in effect the place in which the service producer is located. If the particular place does not convey appropriate cultural meanings, the quality of the specific service may well be tarnished’’ (Urry 1990, p. 40).

Since the services offered are intrinsically la- bor-intensive, employers try to diminish the costs. However, this may undermine the extraordinary character of the tourist experience (Urry 1990, p. 41).

TOURISTS AND THEIR MOTIVATIONS

In an attempt to grasp the features that distinguish tourists from other kinds of travelers, Cohen (1974) singles out certain dimensions that are thought to be essential: duration of the travel, voluntariness, direction, distance, recurrence, and purpose. On the basis of these elements, a tourist may be defined as a traveler who moves voluntarily and for a limited period of time to obtain pleasure from the experience of novelty and change, following a relatively long and non-recurring route.

For the sake of clarity, distinctions are introduced in the form of a dichotomy. However, one can assume that in many cases there are different degrees of distance from ‘‘full-fledged tourism.’’

When the duration of the travel and stay is short (less than twenty-four hours in the definition of the UN Conference on International Travel and

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Tourism), there are trips and excursions. There is also an upper limit, more difficult to determine, beyond which one can speak of permanent travelers (wanderers, nomads).

When the element of voluntariness is lacking, one is dealing with the exile (sometimes voluntary), the slave, the prisoner of war, or the political refugee. The pilgrim also can be considered a type of traveler who differs from the full-fledged tourist inasmuch as in many cases there is a lack of voluntariness. This is the case because social expectations can determine the decision to travel and the stay (e.g., pilgrimages to Mecca by Muslim believers).

In terms of direction, tourists return to their countries of origin, while immigrants make a oneway trip. There are also intermediate categories that are less easy to classify, such as ‘‘tourist immigrants’’ and ‘‘permanent tourists.’’ These people leave home as tourists but decide to stay for a longer time span in a foreign country. Persons such as the ‘‘expatriates’’ (e.g., the many foreign artists who reside in cities such as Paris) are also difficult to define. They decide to live in a foreign country for indefinite periods without completely cutting their ties with the country of origin.

If the distance is short, one can speak of excursionists and hikers, while if the distance is much longer, one could have spoken in the past of explorers. Today, nearly all the possible destinations on the face of the earth seem to be within the reach of the tourist. If the distance implies crossing a national border, there is the already mentioned distinction between internal tourism and international tourism.

When travel and stay have a season or weekend regularity (recurrence), one is dealing with the the habitué, who often is the owner of a summer house. This person is not properly a tourist, because the elements of novelty and change are lacking.

Finally, the purpose for the tourist does not have to be instrumental but can involve the seeking of pleasure. If the purpose is instrumental or has another specific nature different from the search for novelty and change, one is dealing with students, old country visitors, conventioneers, business travelers, tourist employees, and the like.

However, this criterion is not as precise as it might appear at a first glance. The noninstrumental character of the purpose and the search for novelty and change has to be considered from a social point of view. When an individual takes a vacation for reasons of prestige, this travel is socially defined as a pleasure trip even if that individual will not enjoy the experience. More likely, there will be the opposite case: The purpose is declared as instrumental, but other instrumental (and not) purposes are also relevant (Savelli 1998, p. 57).

Tourists’ motivations also can be analyzed by distinguishing the push factors that lead to the desire to go on vacation from the pull factors that the various areas of attraction exercise on the tourist (Savelli 1986, p. 2269).

To show the ‘‘versatility’’ of the tourism phenomenon, a relationship can be seen between some of its forms and the fundamental needs listed by Maslow. Therapeutic tourism satisfies physiological needs, while the needs of security and belonging are satisfied by familiar and ‘‘identity’’ tourism. The need for social recognition is catered to by tourism à raconter, (The French expression à raconter refers to a tourist who leads you to extraordinary places where extraordinary things happen that one is very pleased to narrate to friends, thereby obtaining social status.) and people satisfy the need for self-esteem through sport and cultural tourism (Kovacshazy and people 1998, p. 58).

To describe the psychological and social situation experienced by the tourist, some authors propose an interesting analogy between the tourist and the pilgrim. Both move from a familiar place to a distant one and then come back. In faraway localities, they dedicate themselves—al- though in different ways—to the ‘‘worship’’ of sacred places. These can be described as ‘‘liminoid’’ situations in which daily obligations are suspended (Turner and Truner 1978): ‘‘There is license for permissive and playful ‘non-serious’ behavior and the encouragement of a relatively unconstrained ‘communitas’ or social togetherness’’ (Urry 1990, p. 10). The purpose of a vacation thus consists of overturning the daily routine: Middle-class tourists try to be a ‘‘peasant for a day,’’ while tourists with a lower social rank try to be ‘‘king/queen for a day’’ (Gottlieb 1982).

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