Scale development and structural modeling study on spiritual tourism experience based on transformational learning and positive psychology theory

The transformational learning theory by Mezirow (1991) focuses on people's internalizing and making sense of their experiences completely and gaining a different perspective with a radical change in their thoughts, feelings and actions followed by the psychological process. Emerging in the fourth step of the individual's internal and psychological seeking process, spiritual tourism, stands out as a positive psychology-oriented transformational and sustainable tourism type. It is aimed to develop a spiritual tourism experience scale, to reveal a comprehensive spiritual tourist typology, and to examine the relationships between spiritual tourism experience (STE) and positive tourist psychology (PTP) directly and at the level of indicators. To this end, an exploratory sequential mixed method research was conducted. The research followed a total of 21-step scientific process based on Churchill's (1979) eight-step scale development model and Creswell and Plano Clark's (2011) mixed method procedure. In the qualitative phase, 11 face-to-face interviews with data triangulation technique, 42 asynchronous online interviews, 6 observations in the country, 33 observations abroad, document reviews on 818 evaluations were conducted. In the quantitative phase, 950 spiritual tourists filled out the questionnaires. The thematic analysis of 2683 tourist statements have revealed that spiritual tourism experience is a reflective structure including the following 6 components: "Transformation, Healing, Atmosphere, Transcendence, Escape and Divine Connectedness". The findings show that 31-item "Spiritual Tourism Experience Scale" is statistically valid and reliable. The typology defined by Haq and Jackson (2006a) was expanded and redefined as "seeker, master, travel-lover, random, incidental, serendipitous and sympathizer." The study revealed the popular spiritual tourism motivations such as "growth, transformation, awareness, healing, new perspective, positive psychology, inner journey to self, self-realization, inner peace". According to Spiritual Tourism Experience Based Positive Tourist Psychology Model, there is a strong positive relationship between STE and indicators of positive psychology namely mindfulness, positive emotions, positive thinking, satisfaction, subjective, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing. There is a direct and memorability-mediated positive relationship between PTP and post-experience behaviours.