An Analysis of Tourism Expenditure beyond Economic Perspectives: Applying Configurational Model and Complexity Theory

This study contributes to the existing literature of tourism expenditure by offering a novel analytical approach to solve complex interactions of expenditure antecedents. It also advance the theory for linkage of socioeconomic indicators of prosperity with expenditure pattern of tourists during outbound travel. This thesis tries to enlighten the significant role of other social, cultural and psychographic variables beyond economic variables, in country of origin to address emerging trend of tourism expenditure behavior at global scale. Although, a wide range of indicators were employed to predict tourism expenditure, this study explores sufficient complex configurations for simulation of both high and low scores of outbound tourism expenditures, which provide policy implications in both destination countries and countries of origin. The thesis adopts complexity theory and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze a composite score of 5-year data for 105 countries. By applying asymmetrical modelling, this study proposes to identify combinations of five indicators of prosperity leading to both high and low scores for tourism expenditure at the macro level. The results of predictive validity indicated that capacity of the proposed model to predict future outcome using other samples. One of the key findings of this study is the importance of socio-cultural and socio-political conditions in origin countries that consistently contribute in formulating the low level of expenditure as well the high level of expenditure as a complex behavior of tourists beyond their geographical borders. The results extends our knowledge of the asymmetrical relationships of tourism expenditure and its antecedents. Plus the fact that, the role of global contemporary issues should take in to consideration when it comes to modelling expenditure behavior of tourist, particularly, in global scale. Keywords: Outbound Tourism Expenditure, Prosperity, Configuration, fsQCA, Predictive validity, Asymmetrical relationships, Global crisis