Human ethology and tourists’ photographic poses

Philip L. Pearce and Zhe Wang

Annals of Tourism Research, 2019, vol. 74, issue C, 108-120

Abstract: In this study the ideas and approaches of human ethology are applied to the topic of individual tourists posing for a photograph at iconic tourism sites. The emphasis in the study is on tourists’ postures and, using both researcher collected examples and internet materials, the work outlines an original category scheme for the kinds of poses observed. An eight part coding scheme was built on a careful analysis of the position of the tourists’ head, trunk, arms, legs and gestures. The labels assigned to the five most common poses were composed, cute, bland, model, and interacting with the tourist attraction. There was substantial agreement among two coders who applied the eight part system to 325 images. Explanations for these posture styles were pursued through considering concepts from human ethology. The potential applications of this style of work were briefly noted.

Keywords: Posture; Solo poses; Tourist photography; Human ethology; Categorization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738318301221
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:74:y:2019:i:c:p:108-120

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2018.11.002

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Tourism Research is currently edited by John Tribe

More articles in Annals of Tourism Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().