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mainly for non-leisure purposes, often religious �see
pilgrimage).
pseudo-event
DUNCAN TYLER, UK
Pseudo-events are inauthentic, manufactured sites
or `happenings', predominantly focused on mass
tourists in guided groups that thrive on the
contrived, often being inattentive to the `real'
world around them. Usually pseudo-events are
enjoyed by tourists staying in the environmental
bubble of placeless-style hotels, which insulate
them from meaningful contact with the local
population. In recent years, pseudo-events have
become ever more fanciful, grandiose and staged.
See also: hyperreality; staged authenticity
psychographics
KEITH HOLLINSHEAD, UK
The term `psychographics' is used in tourism
market research as a summary description for
identifying tourists sharing attitudes, values,
motives and activity preferences. It is a contrasting
term to demographics, which profiles them according
to such variables as age, gender, nationality
and income. Psychographics are being used
increasingly in the market segmentation field
usually as a supplement or in combination with
demographics analyses.
psychology
PHILIP L. PEARCE, AUSTRALIA
Psychology concentrates on the behaviour and
experience of individuals. As the scientific study
of human behaviour, psychology can claim to be
over 120 years old, tracing its epistemological
foundation to the laboratory research of Wundt in
1879. The study of human behaviour in a nonsystematic
fashion has a much longer history and
several strands of contemporary theorising draw on
earlier philosophical and intellectual traditions.
psychology 471
Social psychology, one of its several distinct
branches, addresses the behaviour of individuals
as influenced by the groups to which they belong.
Environmental psychology, an even more recent
branch, considers the influences of the physical
setting on human behaviour. The principle contributions
of psychology to tourism come from
social and environmental psychology although the
broad topic of cognition which refers to human
thinking and information processing has provided
some important conceptual tools for tourism
research and analysis.
Some of the prominent topic areas in psychology
which have been adapted and developed for
tourism study are reviewed here, but psychology
research has perhaps played its most important role
in a general or superordinate way. The methodological
rigour and the data collecting and appraising
style which defines the scientific approach to
human behaviour is central to the work of many
tourism researchers. Much work is conducted in
the area of analysing tourism markets, tourist
satisfaction and needs. At times this work has
been conceptually limited as the work has had an
immediate and highly applied focus. Nevertheless
the design of survey questions, the use of
attitude scales, the nature of sampling and the
statistical treatment of the data are all contributions
from the research world of psychology in general as
well as from the boundary areas of social
psychology and sociology. In the 1930s, 1940s
and 1950s substantial research and analysis of
survey techniques, fieldwork methodologies and
statistical treatment of data were developed in the
United States and Britain in such content areas as
surveys of political attitudes, television watching,
the war effort, education and racial segregation.
Contemporary tourism study benefits in a major
way from the methodological outcomes and
knowledge acquired during these years of innovation
and evaluation in survey and social research.
For some researchers, the starting point of study
is with the psychology of the tourist and in
particular with the question of what motivates
people to travel. The study of tourism motivation
has evolved as a significant interest with theoretical
developments, including Plog's �1988) allocentric/
psychocentric approach, optimal arousal theory
and Pearce's �1988) travel career ladder. All such