The effect of tourism students professional perceptions and expectations and future anxieties on their desire to work in the sector: An application for tourism higher education students in Antalya

Tourism has become an indispensable industry for many countries due to the increasing number of tourists and tourism revenues. As a course of its nature, there is human factor at the center of the tourism phenomenon. In today's increasingly competitive environment, as a result of globalization, it is clear that the most important factor in success is human resources. As in all other sektors, this is becoming more important for the tourism industry as a labor-intensive industry. For this reason, enterprises which are employing people with tourism education, have a significant advantage to be one step ahead of their competitors. It is very important for tourism enterprises that the students who received tourism education work in the sector after graduation. In this research, professional perceptions and expectations and future anxiety, which are among the factors affecting the desire of the students who received tourism education to work in the sector, have been discussed. The main purpose of the study is to examine the effects of students' professional perceptions and expectations and future anxieties on their desire to work in tourism sector and whether the future anxiety variable is a mediating variable between the other two variables. For this purpose, face to face surveys were applied to 364 tourism department students who were determined by easy sampling. The data obtained were entered into SPSS 22.00 program and descriptive statistics and relationships between variables were examined. According to the results of the analysis, there was a positive relationship between professional perception and expectation and desire to work, a negative relationship between future anxiety and desire to work, and a negative relationship between professional perception and expectation and future anxiety. It was revealed that the future anxiety variable was a partial mediator variable between professional perception and expectation and students' desire to work. Keywords: Professional Perception and Expectation, Future Anxiety, Desire to Work, Partial Mediator Variable, Tourism Education