Abstract

Purpose: The influence of destinations’ poverty on tourism decision-making and, more precisely, destination selection has received scant attention despite the increasing importance of poverty. This study adopts complexity theory to examine the combination of factors influencing tourists’ destination selection in relation to developed destinations’ rising poverty levels.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The study employed fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to examine the combinations of factors that are significant in influencing destination selection whereas Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) was used complementarily to evaluate the size effect of the examined conditions. Moreover, semi-structured interviews with industry stakeholders were performed to examine the relationships that describe the generated configurations.

Findings: In total, four solutions were generated: (i) the cultural influence and poverty (ii) the destination aspects (iii) the poverty issues, and (iv) the travel experience and poverty while qualitative data reveal that industry policymakers and practitioners hold different perceptions of tourists’ destination selection process.

Implications: Study results show that poverty perceptions influence destination selection. Hence, poverty must be considered in travel behaviour investigations beyond the developing destination context whereas destinations may select either one or a combination of the generated sufficient configurations when deciding on their tourism development plans.

Originality/Value: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study examining the effects of developed destinations’ increasing poverty levels on tourism decision-making and specifically on destination selection.

Keywords: chaos and complexity; poverty; destination selection; decision-making; fsQCA