FinalVersionRELIGIOUSTOURISM

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335943540 Religious tourism studies: evolution, progress, and future prospects Article  in  Tourism Recreation Research · September 2019 DOI: 10.1080/02508281.2019.1664084 CITATIONS READS 14 6,679 authors, including: Bona Kim Brian E M King Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) The Hong Kong Polytechnic University 13 PUBLICATIONS   157 CITATIONS    257 PUBLICATIONS   4,076 CITATIONS    SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Towards Sustainability: Exploring the Social and Economic Dimensions of Travel to Hong Kong by Mainland Chinese View project Cultural Tourism View project All content following this page was uploaded by Brian E M King on 25 September 2019 The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file Religious Tourism Studies: Evolution, Progress, and Future Prospects Abstract This review study examines evolving themes in the scholarly literature on religious tourism and identifies research gaps that provide a basis for future investigations The researchers evaluate a total of 84 studies of religion-induced tourism using content and thematic analyses The findings show a plurality of approaches, both disciplinary and interdisciplinary, that extend to diverse methods, themes, applications, geographical foci and manifestations of the phenomenon Understandings of religious tourism have evolved beyond pilgrimage and now encompass the meaningfulness of a destination Recent explorations have extended beyond visitor motivations to consider their identities, such as individual religious affiliations and religiosity The current paper contributes to knowledge by embracing infrastructure and the activities which occur in and around religious places as a legitimate study domain Keywords: religious tourism, pilgrimage, religion, content analysis, thematic analysis, literature review This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Tourism Recreation Research on 19 Sep 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02508281.2019.1664084 1 Introduction The earliest studies on religion-induced travel appeared in various tourism journals in the 1980s (Cohen, 1984; Graburn, 1983; Pfaffenberger, 1983) Subsequently, a typology of religious tourism was proposed, based on the evolution of the pilgrimage movement across different religions (Nolan & Nolan, 1992) The connection with tourism has been long established since pilgrimage has been described as its oldest form (Eliade, 1969; Fleischer, 2000; Smith, 1992) Travelers who exhibit religious motivations have a marked propensity to undertake pilgrimages or visits to religious places (Buzinde et al., 2014; Kruger & Saayman, 2016; Wang et al., 2016) The evident market potential has prompted interest in religious tourism as a tourism niche, comprising those who “engage repeatedly in visits to religious sites and/or on pilgrimage” (Terzidou, 2010) Religious tourism has been a recurring phenomenon within the history of religions and refers to the forms of tourism that have religious associations (Rinschede, 1992) Relevant religious tourism studies have investigated topics in diverse destinations, such as devotional sites (e.g., Abbate & Di Nuovo, 2013; Eade, 1992; Ryan & McKenzie, 2003; Shuo et al., 2009; Vukonić, 1992), religious tourist attractions (e.g., Bond et al., 2015; Fleischer, 2000; Gutic et al., 2010; Hughes, 2013; Kresić et al., 2012), pilgrimage routes (e.g., Amaro et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2016; Murray & Graham, 1997; Nilsson & Tesfahuney, 2016), and festivals (e.g., Cheng et al., 2014; Suntikul & Dorji, 2016) The preceding studies have highlighted distinct religious tourism topics within the wider tourism phenomenon, notably in the case of: the connotations of pilgrimage and where it occurs (Cohen, 1992; Shackley, 2002), the transition of pilgrimage into tourism from the perspective of tourism enlargement (Gupta, 1999; Jackowski & Smith, 1992; Singh, 2004; Singh, 2006; Vukonić, 1992) More recently, topics within the broad categories of religious tourism and pilgrimage have evolved into considerations of secularity (Hung et al., 2017; Murray & Graham, 1997; Nilsson & Tesfahuney, 2016) and even to postmodern pilgrimage as a manifestation of secular pilgrimage (Brown, 2016; Digance, 2003; Hyde & Harman, 2011) The increasing scholarly interest in developing a better understanding of such phenomena is demonstrated by the growing incidence of papers in leading tourism journals Given its defining characteristic as travel with a religious orientation, religious tourism has been epitomized as a travel cohort that is both broad and/or segmented, consisting of those seeking the fulfillment of contemporary, high dimensional desires, such as spirituality, contemplation, tranquility, and guidance (Andriotis, 2009; Rodrigues & McIntosh, 2014) Millions of people are traveling to sacred places in such capacities at any point in time Those who identify themselves in sacred places as religious tourists and pilgrims display remarkable loyalty to such sites and destinations On this basis, religious tourism has potential effects on the economic and cultural development of destinations that exhibit some religious component (UNWTO, 2017) Based on the significance of religious tourism from both the scholarly and applied perspectives, the current researchers set out to review 84 papers on religious tourism and pilgrimage that were published between 1983 and 2018 in 12 leading tourism journals The limitations evident across the existing literature provided an important stimulus for conducting the present study, particularly the preponderance of cross-sectional studies that examine the phenomenon at a single point in time (e.g., Abbate & Di Nuovo, 2013; Amaro et al., 2018; Gutic et al., 2010; Shuo et al., 2009) The findings have depended on relatively unsophisticated measurements, sampling methods, subjects, regional settings, and purposes of travel This pattern has given rise to a diversity of definitions and angles when seeking to define religious tourism Furthermore, there have been few attempts to investigate the phenomena of religious tourism and of pilgrimage in the tourism context, despite the rapid evolution of the former into a postmodern form of contemporary pilgrimage (Collins-Kreiner, 2010, 2016a) Therefore, it is timely to undertake an holistic extraction from the range of existing religious tourism studies, to acknowledge any attendant research problems and generate future research ideas and directions The conduct of an extensive literature review offers a prospectively effective way of understanding religion-induced tourism This approach also facilitates an enhanced understanding of the connections between evolution and progress and provides suggestions about future research directions The adoption of a literature review approach offers a potentially effective means of explaining religion-induced tourism The review also advances understanding of the connections between evolution and progress and suggests future research directions The study aims to provide a cross-sectional review of the existing literature on religious tourism, based on publications in the top 12 tourism journals The religious tourism phenomenon will be explored by considering contextual issues such as disciplinary perspectives, research themes, types of religion by creed and denomination, regional coverage, research methods (qualitative and/or quantitative), and applications The researchers overview the continuous flow of the phenomenon and how refinements have occurred over time by highlighting key domains of religious tourism in line with pilgrimage initiated by religious motives The current study will also outline potential directions for future research Research methods A systematic literature review may involve the systematic assembly of relevant papers (Law et al., 2010) Data for the present study were collected over four stages Firstly, three keywords - “religious tourism,” “religion,” and “pilgrimage” - were used to search for religious tourism related articles The researchers also considered religious creeds such as Islam and Christianity when identifying the incidence of religion-induced tourism studies within the literature Second, the identified keywords were used to search existing journal articles that were listed on Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com), the most renowned search engine for academic journal articles Of the originally identified set of journals, particular consideration was given to 12 tourism journals that are listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) The authors used McKercher et al.’s (2006) rating of tourism journals, noting that journal rankings are indicative of research performance and importance (Law et al., 2009) Across the 12 hospitality and tourism journals, hence, the researchers conducted a manual review of all papers on each journal database using the keywords and religious creeds The authors identified a total of 84 pertinent articles that were published from the time of the first issue up to October 2017 Within the tourism and hospitality field and as is shown in Table 1, Annals of Tourism Research has the largest number of relevant published works (23), followed by International Journal of Tourism Research (15), Tourism Management (10), and Current Issues in Tourism (9) The various studies may be grouped into three periods as follows, based on chronological order: nine studies appeared during early exploration (1983—1992), 19 studies in the introduction period (1997—2009), and 56 studies were reported in the growing period (2010—2018) Figure illustrates the flow of publications [Insert Table and Figure here] Critical findings from the literature Disciplinary classifications and religious tourism contexts Given the widely held view that the tourism phenomenon is complex (Darbellay & Stock, 2012), religious tourism and pilgrimage has also been considered as worthy of investigation by researchers from diverse disciplines Initial efforts adopted a socioanthropological perspective (Pfaffenberger, 1983), by distinguishing between religious pilgrims and fun-seeking tourists at a pilgrimage site in Sri Lanka The researchers observed distinct motivations between pilgrims and tourists This approach of drawing parallels and distinctions was subsequently extended to other disciplines, such as anthropology (e.g., Cohen, 1992; Singh, 2004), sociology (e.g., Andriotis, 2011; Belhassen & Santos, 2006; Eade, 1992; Murray & Graham, 1997; Nyaupane et al., 2015; Nilsson & Tesfahuney, 2016; Sizer, 1999), psychology (e.g., Abbate & Di Nuovo, 2013; Bond et al., 2015; Buzinde et al., 2014; Damari & Mansfeld, 2014; Gutic et al., 2010; Kim et al., 2016; Lankford et al., 2005; Lee et al., 2015; Sharpley & Sundaram, 2005; Taheri, 2016; Wang et al., 2016), management (e.g., Ballantyne et al., 2016; Henderson, 2011; Hung et al., 2017; Shinde, 2010; Wong et al., 2016), marketing (e.g., CollinsKreiner, 2016; Hughes, 2013; Hung, 2015; Hung et al., 2015; Kresić et al., 2012; Kruger & Saayman, 2016; Terzidou, Stylidis, & Terzidis, 2017; Triantafillidou et al., 2010), geography (e.g., Della Dora, 2012), theology (e.g., Singh, 2006), economics (Barajas et al., 2014; Dafuleya, et al., 2017; Fourie, et al., 2016; Saayman et al., 2014; Sánchez, et al., 2017), and history (e.g., Gupta, 1999; Jackowski & Smith, 1992; Linderman, 2012) Researchers have investigated religious tourism in a variety of contexts including responsible tourism (e.g., Sizer, 1999), sustainable tourism (e.g., Gupta, 1999; Murray & Graham, 1997), ashram tourism (e.g., Sharpley & Sundaram, 2005), Islamic tourism (e.g., Battour, Battor, & Bhatti, 2014; Battour, Ismail, & Battor, 2011; Battour, Ismail, Battor, & Awais, 2017; Din, 1989; Eid, 2015; Eid & El-Gohary, 2015a, 2015b; Jafari & Scott, 2014; Shafaei 2017; Zamani‐Farahani & Henderson, 2010; Zamani-Farahani & Musa, 2012), pilgrimage tourism (e.g., Abbate & Di Nuovo, 2013; Henderson, 2011; Hudman & Jackson, 1992; Kresić et al., 2012; Lankford et al., 2005; Nilsson & Tesfahuney, 2016; Vukonić, 1992), festival tourism (e.g., Cheng et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2015; Suntikul & Dorji, 2016), secular pilgrimage tourism (e.g., Brown, 2016; Collins-Kreiner, 2016a), ecotourism (e.g., CollinsKreiner, 2016b; Murray & Graham, 1997), route-based tourism (e.g., Murray & Graham, 1997; Olsen & Wilkinson, 2016), slow tourism (e.g., Olsen & Wilkinson, 2016), alternative tourism (e.g., Singh, 2006), cultural tourism (e.g., Murray & Graham, 1997; Suntikul & Dorji, 2016), heritage tourism (e.g., Bond et al., 2015; Shackley, 2002; Uriely et al., 2003), rural tourism (e.g., Dafuleya et al., 2017), and new tourism (e.g., Singh, 2004) Research applications and methods Table outlines the research applications and methods that various religious tourism and pilgrimage studies have applied using types of data Out of 84 religious tourism studies, 77 (91.7%) adopted a positivist and empirical approach, whereas only seven (8.3%) used a conceptual or theory-based approach More than half (44) of the studies used applied qualitative research methods, whereas 29 and 11 respectively of the studies used qualitative and mixedmethod approaches For research analysis purposes, it is noted that 51 studies used primary data; 17 used secondary data; and 16 were based on primary and secondary data [Insert Table here] Classifications by region and by religion Research regions of religious tourism studies The literature review was undertaken by evaluating the 84 applicable studies on the basis of regional setting They were distributed as follows: 46 were conducted in the Asia-Pacific region, 26 were undertaken in Europe, three in America, and six in Africa The most popularly researched countries were: India (8), Israel (8) and UK (8), followed by China (7), Spain (6), Greece (5), and Malaysia (5) Table presents the various representative authors along with when the publication appeared, the incidence of religious doctrines, applicable research sites, and subjects of exploration The literature review reveals that the most frequently researched creed was Islam (16%), followed by other creeds and denominations: Buddhism (15%), Catholicism (14%), Hinduism (10.5%), Christianity (overall) (8%), Orthodox (6%), Anglican (6%), Zionism (3.5%), Taoism (3.5%), Judaism (2%), Mormonism (2%), Secularism (3.5%), and United African Apostolic Church (1%) The applicable geographical regions that were explored in the various studies embraced sacred regions, sites, shrines, or temples of prevalent religions It has been common to identify particular geographical regions as having exclusive meanings for certain religions In addition, some regions or nations, such as Israel and India are home to multiple religions (e.g., Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) (Sizer, 1999) Each of the religious tourism studies focused on sites that were affiliated with a particular religion However, though the geographical or regional study locations were often closely associated with representative creeds, the research subjects were not always believers or adherents to the particular religion and their affiliations exhibited considerable variation Furthermore, most religions not require or even recommend pilgrimage or visiting sacred sites as a lifetime vow It is however, compulsory for Muslims and Hindus (Henderson, 2011; Hudman & Jackson, 1992) Religious places attract all visitor types ranging from the sacred to the profane and who exhibit multiple motivations (Hudman & Jackson, 1992; Pfaffenberger, 1983) [Insert Table here] Study classifications by research theme In seeking an optimum number of groupings that balances the need to show variety evident across the literature with meaningful groupings, the analysis of 84 studies generated four main themes These include how religious tourism evolved from pilgrimage, the perceptions of religious tourists, religious tourism destinations, and religious tourism infrastructure The religious tourism evolved from pilgrimage Since the early 1990s researchers have shown increasing interest in the emergence of religion-induced travel to Catholic pilgrimage shrines as a tourism related movement (Jackowski & Smith, 1992; Vukonić, 1992) The recognition of such forms of tourism has prompted definitions of the religious tourism phenomenon as a particular type of tourism in which visitors are motivated partially or exclusively by religious premises (Nolan & Nolan, 1992; Rinschede, 1992) Several religious tourism case studies have been conducted in the Indian Himalayas, a prominent Hindu pilgrimage destination that dates back to ancient Indian religious traditions (Gupta, 1999; Singh, 2004; Singh, 2006) The evolving phenomenon is viewed favorably because it brings apparent benefits to pilgrims, local communities, and society (Gupta, 1999) There is a prospect of transforming some visitors into pilgrims since tourism at sacred sites can function as an irreplaceable experience that has connotations with theological meanings