| Author: | Luk, Yim Mei |
| Title: | How does having a child change leisure and travel patterns among new parents? |
| Advisors: | Mckercher, Bob (SHTM) |
| Degree: | DHTM |
| Year: | 2016 |
| Subject: | Tourism -- Social aspects. Hospitality industry -- Social aspects. Tourists -- Attitudes. Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | ix, 263 pages |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | The transition of parenthood produces tremendous upheavals in the individuals' lives. With the addition of newborn, couples are ushered into a period of disequilibrium and reorganization. Although leisure is a major domain of overall life satisfaction, most couples encounter the intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural constraints in leisure participation during the transition of parenthood. The constraints are likely to change across the life stages and highly dependent on the marital status, family size, and types of activities. As vacation is one of the leisure participation on the move and engages in the activity away from home, it is no wonder that most parents have more substantial considerations for taking this form of leisure activity than the others. Regardless of the potential applications of leisure constraints theory into studying travel behavior, only a few studies have applied it to tourism. Making a travel decision is a complicated process since an individual has different expectations and considerations on the planning and arrangement of spatial and temporal changes. Tourists have various propensities to travel to a destination in terms of time, money, skills and health. Three attribute dimensions of perceived facilitators and inhibitors for the pleasure travel destination impact on the decision-making process including need satisfaction, social agreement, and travel ability. It highlights the tourist attitudes have been operationalized as there are differences between the degree of perceived facilitators and inhibitors. Economic barriers, availability of time, and family support are the common perceived constraints which influence the individuals to make the travel decision. Even though there are salient studies contributing to the travel constraints, most of them assume the tourists as a homogeneous group, leading the results of the studies may not be able to help understand the subtle changes of the individuals' perception toward the constraints and meaning of leisure and travel across different life stages, including the transition to parenthood. The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of the transition on leisure and travel experienced by couples who have the first child and the general changes encountered before and after becoming as parents. Through the in-depth interviews with fifteen couples, the individual expectations, experiences and lifestyles in the transition to parenthood are revealed. It is found that the travel pattern of the first time parents is dissimilar with the typical tourists since they have many concerns for going a trip. The tension between parenting and travel is one of the most obvious factors impacting on their travel pattern. The struggles between the personal free will and the needs of the baby on the travel motivation, products and choices are well noted. Understanding the changes of the leisure and travel patterns not only helps investigate how the transition alters the couples' lifestyle, but also sheds the light on the constraints of the leisure participation, the changing travel value, and how the leisure travel in this life stage influences the overall quality of life. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b29499380.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 1.84 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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