Topophilia and Emotional Geographies in Tourism Destinations

Topophilia is “the feeling of affection which individuals have for particular places” (Tuan, 1961).  The term was first coined in 1947 by the American poet, W.H. Auden, and became popularized, at least among academic geographers, by Yi-Fu Tuan’s book, Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values, which was published in 1974 (Prentice-Hall). 

Recent work in geography along the lines of how people develop affections and attachments to places has occurred under the broader title of emotional geography (Davidson, et al. 2007). Emotional geography incorporates cognitive theories on how people “know” and relate to places through their senses, bodily movements and emotions. It includes not just what people say about place experiences, but also the many different ways that they perform, function and experience place with their entire physical being.  How this leads to feelings of topophilia and place attachment is one component of emotional geography.

The connections of topophilia and emotional geographies to tourism are obvious.  Tourism destinations want visitors to like them. They want to create topophilic relationships.  They offer services and attractions that titillate the senses through site, sound, taste, touch and movement.  Though the emphasis is often on somewhat superficial sensory experiences, sometimes turning places into thematic amusement parks, the ultimate goal is almost always to touch that deeper sense of topophilia.

Aspects of cognitive emotional geographies that tourism destinations should consider in their efforts to create topophilic relationships with tourists include the following (adapted from Ogunseitan, 2005):

• Landscape Diversity – A place should contain a variety of different landscape features that are blended together to offer visual and other sensory stimulation.
• Sensory Coherence – Colors, smells, sounds, light, touch (including the sense of movement) all need to be considered and should blend in a logical and pleasing manner.
• Environmental Familiarity – Tourists visiting a new place need things that ground them and which make them feel comfortable and safe, including identifiable objects, spaces of privacy, and open spaciousness.
• Cognitive Challenges – Tourists also need to be challenged by the places that they visit, through varying degrees of complexity, mystery, surprise and exhilaration

In essence this is finding the right balance between sensory dissonance and rationality, and between cognitive safety and risk.  These are the tourism destination’s tools of topophilic place making.  How does your community compare on these measures?

References cited

Davidson, J., Smith, M., and Bond, L. (eds.) 2007. Emotional Geographies. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.

Ogunseitan, O.A. 2005. Topophilia and the Quality of Life. Environmental Health Perspectives 113(2): 143–148. - Published online 2004 November 22. doi:  10.1289/ehp.7467, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277856/

Tuan, Y-F. 1961. Topophilia. Landscape 11 (Fall): 29-32.

(This entry is also posted at: http://hospitality.blognotions.com/2011/12/20/ tourism-topophilia-and-emotional-geographies/)

Us and Them among Tourists in Taiwan

Tourists are humans and tend to behave as any other human social animal.  One human behavioral characteristic is to form social groups that include some (“Us”) and exclude other (“Them”).

I saw this recently during my second visit to Taiwan in the past eight months.  I went to Sun Moon Lake in the central Taiwan mountains which is possibly the biggest single tourist attraction in Taiwan for mainland Chinese tourists.  In the last couple of months, mainland Chinese tourists have become the largest single source of tourists to Taiwan, replacing Japanese tourists who have declined considerably following the earthquake and tsunami. Almost all Chinese tourists tour Taiwan on package group tours, and it seems that most of those tours include Sun Moon Lake.  We saw the following statistics on display at the new, post-modern Sun Moon Lake Visitors Center:

Growth in Mainland Chinese to Taiwan & Sun Moon Lake

Year – Number – % visiting Sun Moon Lake

2008 – 89,970 – 74.2%
2009 – 600,969 – 92.5%
2010 – 1,165,549 – 98.8%

The growth has been quite phenomenal, and there was a news story a couple of weeks ago about how the Taiwan stock market is has been strong due to the large number of mainland Chinese tourists expected this year.

What I was told by my hosts/guides was that because so many mainlanders now go to Sun Moon Lake, other tourist groups have stopped going there. The two other groups, in particular, that have largely (not completely) stopped going to Sun Moon Lake are the domestic Taiwan tourists and the Japanese tourists. There are some districts and sites in Taipei that I have been to that are mostly Japanese, including a Cantonese restaurant where we had to wait to with mostly Japanese people out on the sidewalk to get a seat.  Many of them were holding Japanese guidebooks of various kinds that recommended the restaurant.  I really liked the food, which had a uniquely Japanese delicacy to it.

There are other places in the world where visitors segregate based on culture and ethnicity.  There are Mediterranean resort islands that are almost all German-speaking next to an island that is all French-speaking, for example.  And most of the tourists to Barbados in the Caribbean are British and Canadian, while visitors to nearby Martinique is mostly French, and St. Lucia is mostly American.

Most of this segregation is due to business efficiencies, though there is also some desire among some tourists to congregate with their own, which gives them a bubble of security, even when in a different country.  My hosts/guests, for example, told me that Taiwan domestic tourist avoid Sun Moon Lake because (1) it is too crowded and (2) occasional political conflicts between mainland and Taiwan Chinese. It seems to me that in some ways, Sun Moon Lake has become a sacrificial site for increased mainland Chinese tourism. 

Off hand, I do not know of similar examples here in the US where such ethnic separation in tourism is so clearly defined.  I would be interested to hear about such places if you know of any.  And I wonder if we might see this in the future as the US becomes ever more culturally diverse.

(Geography Note: Sun Moon Lake is actually a reservoir that was created on top of a wetland area with a smaller lake in which the local aboriginal Thao people fished.  The Japanese added some dams to make the original lake larger and to generate hydroelectric power when they ruled Taiwan (1989 to 1945), and the R.O.C. Taiwan government created the current version of the lake around 1970.)