THE EXPERIENCE OF VISITING HOME AND FAMILIAR PLACES

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 1024–1047, 20120160-7383/$ - see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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doi:10.1016/j.annals.2011.11.018www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures

THE EXPERIENCE OF VISITING HOMEAND FAMILIAR PLACES

Philip L. PearceJames Cook University, Australia

Abstract: This paper identifies and seeks to explain a relatively novel topic in tourism studies:individuals’ experiences in returning to previous places of significance and familiarity in theirlives. The topic is labelled VHFP (Visiting Home and Familiar Places) and is linked to butconceptually independent of VFR studies. It is argued that VHFP can be understood by con-sidering foundation work in neuroscience as well as integrating contributions from humanemotions, memory, time perception and the psychology of possibility. Several studies are pro-posed to develop this topic by employing varied paradigms of inquiry and a range of familiarand innovative methods. Keywords: going home, emotions, time perception, memory, neuro-science. � 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

It is the core argument of this paper that there is an understudiedcategory of travel which may be broadly captured by the expressionVHFP- Visiting Home and Familiar Places. This category of travel isseen as conceptually independent of VFR-Visiting Friends and Relativestravel- although there are potential links as well as dissimilarities. Ourinterest in going ‘‘home’’ in this context is defined as visits to the con-stellation of locations and their associations which individuals experi-ence during their periods of growing up (cf. Coles & Timothy, 2004;Duval, 2004; White & White, 2007). This interest also encompasses aconcern with past relationships and reflections on previous activities.Additionally we will also consider locations where individuals havespent considerable time and consequently feel familiar and have exten-sive previous knowledge of the setting. In the VHFP formulation we arenot interested in tourists and visitors returning from their travels totheir current home or place of residence (Maoz, 2006).

The paper consists of two interrelated sections. In the first sectionthe aim of the discussion is to provide a rich understanding of theexperience of returning ‘‘home’’ or to very familiar places. This goalwill be pursued by considering a suite of interrelated concepts in the

Philip Pearce holds a D.Phil from Oxford University and is the Foundation Professor ofTourism at James Cook University (Foundation Professor of Tourism, James Cook University,Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia. Email <[email protected]>). He has interestsin all aspects of tourist behaviour as well as an interest in communities and tourism.

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areas of emotion, human memory, cognition, identity and the percep-tion of time. It will be argued that taken together these concepts pro-vide prompts and directions for tourism researchers to investigate thissomewhat understudied form of travel. The second aim of the paper,which is addressed in a separate and subsequent section, is to identifyspecific studies deriving from these conceptual foundations. Thesestudies include proposals for direct empirical work as well as investiga-tions of tourism sector involvement in this kind of travel.

The motivation for exploring this topic is twofold. Tourism research-ers, like their wider circle of social science cousins, need to be to alertto phenomena which have been partially neglected since marginal top-ics can sometimes reveal core points about the major concerns of thestudy field. For example tourism researchers have been concerned withissues of identity and self perception for some time (Bowen & Clarke,2009; Clifford, 1997; Cohen, 1984; Pearce, 1982; Ryan, 2002). It can beproposed that the phenomenon of VHFP travel is related to these is-sues and may offer new insights (Duval, 2004; Lew & Wong, 2005). Asecond motivating force for the interest in tourists going home liesin the challenges such travels raise in the commercial world. If VHFPtravel matters to quite a few people, in what ways can tourism marketersand destination managers shape, stimulate and successfully supportthis kind of tourist experience? Again it would seem appropriate tonot just ask the question but to analyse the topic and begin its assess-ment and measurement.

In contemporary society, particularly in western cultures and amongthe more affluent members of those societies, the prevailing pattern ofwhere people come from and why they are there in any workplace orcommunity is a jigsaw of identity related stories and accounts(Desforges, 2000; Larsen, Urry, & Axhausen, 2006). A corollary of thisdiversity is that there are many possible patterns in the VHFP experi-ence. In brief, the phenomenon in which we are interested is messyand multi-faceted but arguably challenging and worthy of carefuland considered attention.

HOME AND FAMILIAR PLACES

It is a truism that everybody comes from somewhere. Blainey (2004)reminds us that historically most people lived, worked and died quitenear to the places they were born. For more contemporary times Urry(2000), Coles and Timothy (2004) and Hall (2005) have all observedthat mobilities related to employment opportunities have creatednew issues in people’s connections to places as well as challenges totheir identity. The relocation brought about by twenty first centurymobility can be conceived as involving several patterns and sequences.For some adults their own childhoods have involved a shifting tapestryof living in diverse places as their family moved from setting to setting.Some of these individuals have repeated the shifting patterns of theirpast and have a rich assembly of ‘‘homes’’ or familiar places to whichthey might choose to return. Others, by way of contrast, experienced

1026 P.L. Pearce / Annals of Tourism Research 39 (2012) 1024–1047

long periods of locational stability in their childhoods. For some ofthese individuals, the childhood stability has been followed by theirown relocations in their quest for educational, employment and life-style benefits. Yet again, some individuals continue to live and workin the very same community in which they were raised. For these indi-viduals VHFP travel is not a relevant category.

The locational movements with which we are concerned tend to beaway from one region or city to another, rather than suburban reloca-tion within an urban setting. Cross country relocations and hence po-tential revisits are also of interest (cf. Coles & Timothy, 2004). Simplephysical distance issues provide contrasts in the extent to which individ-uals who move are still able to maintain contact with previous places ofresidence. The prevalence of these patterns differ across countries andcontinents with traditions of regional resettling for such activities asemployment and University education varying substantially in differentparts of the world (Duval, 2004). The task of formulating an adequateaccount of the concept of ‘‘home’’ amidst these diverse issues is not asimple one.

Some approaches to defining home are administrative, others stressthe mix of social and locational factors and yet others emphasise psy-chological states (Nielsen, 1999). No approach considered in isolationis entirely adequate. Lee (1976) suggested that at the level of neigh-bourhoods, people hold a socio-spatial schema, an integrated memoryunit of their home environment. In effect he found that people drewborders around their neighbourhoods which reflected the interplay ofsocial relations, activities and places. Schrag (1997) too emphasised theconcept of lived space and stressed the notion that actions and activi-ties as well as relationships build the concept of a home space. In dis-cussing the meaning of home in tourism related contexts, White andWhite (2007: 91) suggested that ‘‘home can arguably be understoodto be ‘‘located’’ primarily in relationships between self and others,rather than being a geographic site.’’

In the approaches discussed so far, physical settings are seen pre-dominantly as a background stage for the dominant relationshipsand activities which define people’s lived existence and sense of home.Other researchers have placed the physical setting in the foreground.Research traditions in geography such as that initiated by Tuan (1977)stress the love of places (topohilia). Nielsen (1999) suggests that thereis a difference between merely occupying a place in the world versusbeing connected to it. He argues that the locations where one growsup form a strong part of one’s biographical identity. Close affinitieswith certain places and emotional attachments to types of landscapesdo need to be considered in our present context.

It is possible to assemble together these diverse emphases in the dis-cussion of the concept of home. For the reflective and research ori-ented purposes of this paper the meaning of visiting home andfamiliar places will be taken as travel to the constellation of valued loca-tions and associations which individuals form during their periods ofgrowing up. Included in the compass of our interests and approachto the concept of VHFP is a concern with relationships and reflections


on activities. Our research interest thus lies with the past ‘‘homes’’ andfamiliar places of many tourists and focuses on the places and relation-ships entangled in their personal and historical biographies. Our inter-est is not in a concern with where they now live, nor is it limited to therelationships they have at their former locations.

There is an allied and blossoming field of research which also directsattention to the experience of going home. On this occasion the tour-ism interest lies not in tourists’ travel to the locations important intheir own life but instead focuses on visiting the places inhabited bytheir forefathers (McCain & Ray, 2003; Newland & Taylor, 2010; Ray& McCain, 2009; Timothy & Guelke, 2008). These interests whichare variously known as genealogical tourism and legacy tourism payparticular attention to groups of tourists returning to the homelandsor regions from which their immigrant forefathers departed. Promi-nent regions which have tried to promote tourism based on their rele-vant diasporas searching for family histories include Scotland, Ireland,Israel and China (Basu, 2004, 2007; Lew & Wong, 2005; Wright, 2008).The value of this literature for the present interest lies in emphasisingthe roles the past can play in shaping people’s travel motivation andidentity quests. Further, some of the research techniques employedin the genealogical studies can be applied to our more focussed inter-est in tracking the shorter time span of the individual’s personal asopposed to extended family history (Almeida & Yan, 2010)

Return travel

An analysis of the existing research effort in the active area of returnor repeat travel identifies some consistencies which help locate thepresent interests in a research context. Most tourism marketing studiesin this area have been concerned primarily with repeat travel to dom-inant tourism destinations (cf. Kotler, 1998; Kozak, Gnoth, & Andreu,2010; Morrison, 2010). Very few studies appear to exist of touristsreturning to little known and personally relevant locations. Many ofthe existing studies of loyalty and repeat visitors are also conceived atthe macro level of analysis (Fakeye & Crompton, 1992; Fallon & Scho-field, 2004). Often the researchers seek to understand repeat businessto countries or large tourism regions. Again studies at this scale over-look our interest in repeat visits to specific communities or familiarsettings.

The purpose of much ongoing work in destination studies lies inwhether or not visitors with experiences at a destination are more orless likely to return to that location. In a study somewhat typical of thisinterest area, Alegre and Juaneda (2006) working in the Balearic Is-lands view destination loyalty as the key concept in their consumer sat-isfaction study (see also Kozak, 2001; Bowen & Clarke, 2009; Pearce,2005). In common with other researchers their empirical work demon-strates differences among first time visitors and repeat visitors in expen-diture, time spent and places visited. Interestingly, Um, Chon, and Ro(2006) also working in this core consumer satisfaction tradition, report


that perceived attractiveness rather than satisfaction may be a key tothe intention to revisit a location. This finding offers some informationfor special consideration in terms of our interest in the VHFP topic.Some repeat travel it can be suggested is more about travellers’ per-sonal history with places and possibly their long standing connectionsand attractions to destinations rather than immediate satisfactionexperiences.

The studies in repeat or return visitors are plentiful but the cast ofthe research is at the broad level of major destinations studied holisti-cally. The key dependent variables being studied are satisfaction andrevisit intentions with modest levels of interest in issues of identity,memory and perceptions of time. A clear opportunity can be identifiedto investigate travellers’ experiences when they return to familiar orhome locations. The proposed work can thus be seen as a specialisedor more intensive version of the broader repeat or return travelresearch.

A more incisive and theoretical set of ideas on repeat travel have alsobeen presented by Seaton (2001, 2002). Reviewing contributions froma number of sociological commentators Seaton argues that tourists re-peat the voyages of those who have travelled before them. He identifiestwo versions of repeat travel in this context; firstly metempsychosiswhich he uses to refer to tourists knowingly replicating the travels ofa single figure and metensomatosis in which tourists implicitly assumethe multiple personae of those who have travelled to the tourist’s cho-sen destination in the past. A particular highlight of this approach isthe attention to the experience of the tourists with several observationsthat it is the small epiphanies of such travel which constitute trulymeaningful points of interaction between the present and the past.Seaton observes, following Benjamin (1999) that:

‘‘the past is more than a dead hand on the present. . . acquisitionsare not just spent residues of the passing show. They come back assmall epiphanies- dialectical images whose ephemeral status is re-energised through contact in the present’’ (2002:143).

The present concerns in tourists retracing their own footsteps can beseen as a specialised version of the repeat travel experiences whichSeaton, Benjamin and others describe. It can be noted in passing thatthere are rich literary and historical resources noted in this work onmetensomatosis which might usefully provide a basis for modellingthe epiphanies of personal repeat travel.

Connections to VFR studies

Since the earliest academic analyses of VFR there have always beentwo trajectories needed to understand the concept: on the one handtravellers may visit friends and relatives or they may be the hosts to suchvisitors (Jackson, 1990). The present interest is in the links to VFR trav-ellers rather than those who host VFR personnel. The academic inter-est in the VFR phenomenon has largely been about how to classify suchtravel and boost its commercial ramifications (Moscardo, Pearce,


Morrison, Green, & O’Leary, 2000; Morrison, Woods, Pearce, Mos-cardo, & Sung, 2000; Seaton & Tagg, 1995; Young, Corsun, & Baloglu,2007). Less attention has been paid to the meaning of returning to ahome or to a very familiar location. In particular, it can be suggestedthat tourism research concerned with VFR has neglected the specificlocational experiences of this ‘‘motive’’ category (Pearce & Moscardo,2005).

There are several ways in which VFR and VHFP tourism can be jux-taposed. Three distinct categories can be identified. First, it is possibleto visit one’s friends and relatives in a location which has a shared pastand which is the basis for long standing associations and meanings.Second, it is also possible to visit one’s friends and relatives in locationswhich have no long standing links for the traveller. An example of thissituation is that of visiting one’s parents who have moved to a new cityin their retirement. Similarly, long standing friends may move about acountry or the globe and while the friendship is retained and visitsmade, the original locations where the friendships were forged areperipheral to the contemporary visit experiences. Third, a travellercan visit a location where the links to family and friends no longer existbut the location through its childhood memories and associations isstill familiar and a part of the traveller’s life history. Retuning to a citywhere one’s relatives have moved away or are now deceased illustratesthe latter notion. Similarly, returning to a University in another state orregion and remembering earlier student days represents a secondexample of the VHFP experience without a VFR component. Theremembered personal links to other people in these cases may stillbe implicit and important. The psychological power of these remem-bered links is illustrated by the work of Fischer, Sauer, Vogrincic,and Weisweiler (2011) who note that simply contemplating one’s per-sonal history and ancestors can enhance personal functioning andcontrol.

PIVOTAL CONCEPTS

Overview

It has been established in the previous sections that the scope ofthe VHFP topic is diverse. The range and potential complexity ofthe VHFP experience offers the opportunity to combine insightsabout experiences from a number of linked research directions.These ideas will be considered in a sequence in order to demonstratehow together they can build a platform for research and analysis ofthe VHFP topic. First, it will be argued that the process of revisitinghome and familiar places is initially a sensory experience which trig-gers basic emotional responses. Panksepp’s (1992, 1998, 2005) workconcerning affective neuroscience will provide some foundation ideasabout basic emotions. The affective neuroscience material will be sup-plemented by Fredrickson’s (2001) key ideas about emotional rangeand her ‘‘broaden and build’’ theory of emotions. But the going


home experience is not simply emotional even though it may offerparticularly strong cues to a part of the human emotional range. Itis also a cognitive process. Environmental cues trigger mindfulnessand confront tourists and visitors with images of time and change.The ideas of Lynch (1976) on places, identity and time, Sacks(1995) on memory and Langer (2009) on the psychology of possibil-ity are powerful here. These ideas will be linked to the positive per-ception of time expressed by Zimbardo and Boyd (2008) where asense of well being is enhanced if people can enlarge the presentwhile viewing the past positively and the future strategically. The fol-lowing review of these pivotal concepts and how they operate to-gether constitutes the attempt to fulfil the first aim of this paper-to provide a rich understanding of the experience of returning‘‘home’’.

Affective Neuroscience

In the recent writing about tourists’ experiences it is often proposedthat there are multiple components of experience (Moscardo, 2010;Schmitt, 2003; Uriely, 2005). The level at which the phases of experi-ence or components have been considered has often been at the mo-lar social science scale of pre-trip, on site and post trip consideration(Cutler & Carmichael, 2010). A component which is frequently men-tioned is the affective or emotional quality of the experience (Cutler& Carmichael, 2010: 19–20). Few authors have explored this compo-nent in detail or suggested pathways of influence amongst this ele-ment and other experiential qualities although both Larsen (2002)and Selstad (2007) allude to the links between emotion and percep-tion. The work of Jaak Panksepp and colleagues offers a more finegrained view (Berridge & Robinson, 2003; Panksepp, 1998, 2005;Panksepp & Biven, 2010).

The distinguishing feature of the affective neuroscience work is thatthree precise levels of evidence are used to provide an understandingof emotion and its brain based roots. The evidence comes in the formof observing similar cross species behavioural patterns, data frombrain based stimulation studies and information derived from drug in-duced behavioural effects (Olds, 1997; Volkow, Fowler, & Wang,2002). Panksepp refers to and labels the core emotional states hehas identified in capital letters; a communication ruse he employsto avoid suggesting that his interest in these topics covers all higherorder interpretations which human reflection and levels of conscious-ness can bring to the systems he has unearthed. The states he dis-cusses are SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PANIC and PLAY.Together with his colleagues, Panksepp approaches the study of thesecore emotional states with the view that consciousness is a tiered multi-level process (see also Greenfield, 2000: 21–23). The interest here is inprimary process consciousness which reflects raw sensory feelings andmotivational imperatives.


The term SEEKING, which involves actively searching the immediatelocale for cues, threats and information when the system is activated,aptly describes one such cross species behaviour of particular interestto our present concerns (Panksepp, 1992). In reviewing a large amountof evidence for a set of basic emotional systems, Panksepp (2005) ar-gues that in human beings, SEEKING is a fundamental emotional sys-tem activated when environments are not quite as we expect them tobe. In the physiological studies individuals who receive specific stimu-lation to key parts of their sub–cortical emotional circuits report feel-ings of being engaged with the environment, a sense of excitementand being alive and even euphoric when the relevant circuits are stim-ulated. The same patterns are observed when key drugs are employedand the commonality of this alert, environment checking behaviour isremarkably uniform across individuals. The observed behaviours arealso congruent with similar responses in other animal species. The spe-cific part of the brain involved in this emotional circuitry is the limbicsystem notably the hypothalamus and the amygdala. It is also notablethat the nerve cell clusters in this system are more responsive to theanticipation of rewards rather than the receipt of reward. Supportingevidence for this view comes in the form of high rates of firing to novelstimuli and attenuated firing to repeated stimuli or predictable trig-gers. This information provides an important point of connection withthe cognitive explanations of responses to novel stimuli such as pro-posed in the mindfulness model (Langer, 1989, 2009). In brief theSEEKING system is a primary emotional response to novel or only par-tially familiar settings.

How might the work of the neuroscientists be applied to tourists andthe coming home experience? Or expressed differently, how might weuse multi-level analysis as Hofstede (1995) suggests and build a richand compatible set of explanations and descriptions of human re-sponses to their world.

The contribution of the affective neuroscience work can be depictedas follows. On returning to a familiar place there are multiple sensorycues which trigger the core affective states. Visual, olfactory, and audi-tory inputs initially dominate the sensory inputs activating the opera-tion of limbic system nodes, especially SEEKING and CARE. Thelater expression is most directly summarised as the need for social con-tact. Cognitive and higher order cortical inputs are involved here too asindividuals struggle to collate familiar patterns of stimulation - oftenthese sensory triggers will be sight lines, smells, tastes, and sound.The totality of the effect is to produce a kind of brain systems echoof earlier neural stimulation; perhaps best captured by a sense of anenlarged deja vu and deja entendu recall. These processes operate ata level of which individuals are barely conscious or more accuratelyat a level which they are not quite able to express. Being with individ-uals returning to home locations or introspecting on one’s own expe-rience can illustrate this psychological turmoil. Individuals cansometimes be seen shaking their heads and trying to find words to ex-plain their immediate reactions when returning to once familiar butnow changed locations.


The stimulation provided by the sensory input effectively switches onthe base emotional states and then these states further activate the indi-vidual’s response to the visited location by engaging search and mean-ing seeking responses. Importantly, the immediate sensory input is notidentical to that which has been received in previous times and thechanges in the external world need to be interpreted cognitively.The base emotional systems which are activated by being in a familiarlocation or the ‘‘home’’ of earlier years are modulated by the memo-ries and language codes of our sophisticated species. This is what Pank-sepp meant by the tiered level of consciousness. The neuroscientistsdescribe their work as defining base forces in the emotion equationrather than its sum. We need to turn to a mix of cognitive and affectiveoverviews of experience to develop an understanding of the connectedbut higher consciousness levels of the VHFP experience.

Consumption emotions

In terms of the base emotions identified by Panksepp and col-leagues, states such as RAGE, FEAR, and PANIC are arguably infre-quent in tourism and travel linked settings. SEEKING, CARE, PLAYand LUST have a greater relevance to the VHFP situations with whichwe are concerned. Certainly it has been argued for some time that con-sumption settings, and by implication tourism related settings, do notelicit all of the emotions which humans can experience (Richins, 1997;Russell, Weiss, & Mendelsohn, 1989; Zins, 2002). For example, Richins(1997) argues that consumption emotions differ in character andintensity from emotions that are experienced in other contexts. Shehas generated a list of affective states intended to capture the full rangeof consumption emotions. This list was based upon respondents’ open-ended descriptions of emotional responses to consumption eventscombined with emotions identified in earlier studies. It was then re-duced by eliminating those words that most respondents were unlikelyto use to describe their consumption emotions. The remaining itemsarguably offer a comprehensive coverage of a two-dimensional modelof affect. In this structure the first dimension represents positivity ornegativity of the emotion while the second is concerned with the levelof activity. The emotion space relevant to consumption revealed a flat-tened model with a greater differentiation of emotions on the firstdimension of positivity than on the second of activity level (cf. Coghlan& Pearce, 2010). In general terms we are dealing in consumption areaswith milder levels of positivity and less active behavioural patterns thanin the base emotional states.

The conversion of the base emotional states into a wider range ofemotions arguably proceeds by the learned labelling of jointly stimu-lated core emotional systems. It has already been suggested that novelstimuli, changed circumstances and surprising elements of the sensoryworld are involved in activating the SEEKING system. Further, mildpositivity has been postulated as a prevailing emotional state in con-sumption and therefore tourism related experiences. It can be sug-


gested that the VHFP experience requires reflective accounts of thecontradictory information which travellers experience on returninghome. At times the VHFP experience produces puzzles – confusinginformation between existing and well embedded maps and memoriesof settings and their immediate appearance. Emotional states whichcan be suggested for this challenge include moods and affective reac-tions such as surprise, annoyance, melancholy, wistfulness, apprecia-tion, contentment and enthusiasm. This set of suggested emotionalpossibilities is consistent with some of the work reviewed in the psychi-atric studies of individuals and the returning home experience (Sacks,1995).

The broaden and build theory

Some emotional reactions to the VHFP experience have alreadybeen proposed and while their frequency and the contexts in whichthey occur await detailed empirical work, it is possible to move beyonda consideration of the precise emotional states to their functions.Fredrickson (2001) has proposed a specific theoretical model to under-stand the special effects of positive emotions. The approach can beseen as particularly relevant to thinking about the benefits of tourismexperiences and is labelled ‘‘the Broaden and Build’’ theory of positiveemotions. Frederickson’s work suggests that certain sets of positiveemotions such as contentment, joy, pride and interest, while being sep-arate and distinct, share a common potential to grow human capacity.More specifically Fredrickson argues:

‘‘all share the ability to broaden people’s momentary thought actionrepertoires and build their personal resources, ranging from physicaland intellectual resources to social and psychological resources’’(2001: 219)

In this view being appreciative and contented are not only hedonisticstates valued in themselves but also they are enriching conditionswhich predispose people to seek more information, reach out to oth-ers, better understand the world and assist resilience to difficult times.At a colloquial level this research is at odds with bland assertions thatdifficult times build one’s character; the evidence is that they do not asthey narrow attention and restrict external information and opportuni-ties. Results from a number of experimental studies where people indifferent emotional states behaved in these broadening, resiliencebuilding ways support Fredrickson’s model (Folkman, 1997; Folkman& Moskowitz, 2000; Fredrickson & Levenson, 1998). The interestingnotion deriving from this theoretical treatment of positive emotionsand germane to our interest in VHFP travel is that if travellers canuse the experience to engender a greater portion of positive ratherthan negative memories then it can be proposed that powerful conse-quences for one’s identity, contentment and personal well being mayfollow. In particular the balance of positive to negative emotions is seenas particularly important with some experimental research indicatingthat a ratio of more than three positive emotions for every one negative


emotion is required for individuals to feel and be seen as doing welland flourishing for that time period (Fredrickson and Losada, 2005).

Links to time perception

One of the major studies linking emotional experiences, cognitivefactors and the positive possibilities inherent in approaching one’s pastlies in the work of Ellen Langer (1989, 2009). She reports in detail anelaborate study conducted to simulate an earlier period of time in thelives of older men (Langer, 2009). Prior to participating in the studythe retired or close to retired older participants were evaluated on arange of physical measures including muscular strength tests and phys-iological indices of blood pressure and immune functioning. Raters as-sessed the men’s appearance and were asked to judge their age.Participants were asked a range of questions about their capacitiesand health. Langer’s study involved having the men live out a ‘‘holiday’’period in a specially reconstructed monastery which replicated a periodof time twenty years earlier. Everything in the setting including televi-sion programs, baseball scores, food and furnishings were elaboratelycontrived to reproduce the earlier time period. The experimentalinstructions were for the men to talk about and live their holiday periodas if the constructed past they inhabited was their only reality.

The detailed findings of this extended effort in considering how peo-ple react to the past were striking. Physically the men participated inactivities which belied their age. Independent raters assessed themafter the study period as younger than was the case prior to engagingin the study. Physical parameters and health indicators all improved inpositive directions. Initially Langer considered the study to be a dem-onstration of the power of learned helplessness where senior citizenswere fulfilling the expectations of growing older. Later and morerecently Langer has used the work to discuss the psychology of possibil-ity. The latter concept is used to suggest that if we can see the world infresh ways we can maximise the way we behave to make the most of theabilities we do have. The study provides important clues as to how revis-iting the past and engaging with our images of time in positive waysmay benefit those who participate in VHFP travel.

This distinctive study and its recent re- interpretation in terms of thepsychology of possibility are congruent with the ideas of Kevin Lynch(Bannerjee and Southworth, 1990; Pearce & Fagence, 1996). The par-ticular work of Lynch of most interest in this context is his 1972 volumeWhat Time is this Place? Lynch asserts that our identity and well beingare linked to our image of time. He observes that visiting old placesand previously familiar sites produces a:

‘‘pleasurable melancholy (which) may be coupled with the obser-ver’s satisfaction at having survived or (even) be tinged with righteoustriumph . . .but at base the emotional pleasure is a heightened sense ofthe flow of time.’’ (1972: 44)

Lynch suggests, in phrases which anticipate more recent writing inpsychology, that the individual’s challenge is to celebrate the past while


making connections with the present and the future. From his plan-ning perspective Lynch argues that places act as a jumbled historicalindex of people’s lives including their socially shared experiences.He advocates education to prepare both those who use environmentsand those who alter them to respect time dimensions in settings. Inpractical terms this means keeping records and presenting images ofplaces for public consumption. He also advocates developing informa-tion resources so that people can understand the forces at work inchanging the settings they have known. Lynch argues that peoplecan be empowered by this information because they can understandchange and their communities. These acts of physical and psychologi-cal time management are purported to prevent individuals being alien-ated from change processes and may assist in building positiveidentities.

In a somewhat parallel set of comments but developed from a differ-ent tradition of research, Zimbardo and Boyd (2008) also argue thattime based well-being is a complex matter of integrating the way wetreat the past, live in the present and anticipate the future. Zimbardoand colleagues devised a set of time related questions -the ZimbardoTime Perspective Inventory (the ZTPI) - which enables researchers toassess the emphases people place on different time periods (Zimbardo& Boyd, 1999). Illustrative questions from the ZTPI include: I get nos-talgic about my childhood; It’s hard for me to forget unpleasant mem-ories of my youth; Familiar childhood sights, sounds, and smells oftenbring back a flood of wonderful memories; I often think of what Ishould have done differently in my life; It upsets me to be late forappointments; There will always be time to catch up with my work,and Fate determines much in my life. (See Zimbardo & Boyd, 2008:53–60 for all 66 questions). Five time perspective scores are calculated;past negative, past positive, present hedonistic, present fatalistic andfuture. The separate components describe scores for being negativeabout the past (e.g. showing regret, remembering painful events, wish-ing mistakes could be corrected); positive about what has happenedbefore (e.g. enjoying wonderful memories, relishing stories about thegood old times, enjoyment of rituals and traditions, being nostalgicabout childhood); maximising present enjoyment (e.g. being impul-sive, living for now, taking immediate risks, preferring spontaneity);being fatalistic about day to day life (e.g. beliefs in the importance ofluck and the influence of other forces, reporting a sense of powerless-ness to influence the course of events); and being more oriented to thefuture than the present (e.g. an emphasis on goal setting, delayingimmediate gratification, working before playing). In developments ofthe work a transcendental future time perspective has been addedand this orientation records people’s belief in an after life, divine laws,and beliefs in an enduring human soul.

A total of 66 questions are used to cover these multiple time perspec-tives. The questions require agreement on a yes or no basis but to scorehighly on any sub-scale respondents have to provide a mix of agree anddisagree responses as the way in which the questions are phrasedincludes some reversals of meaning (Zimbardo & Boyd, 2008, pp.


53–61). Several studies using this scale link these time perspectives toindividual well-being and happiness (cf. Harber, Boyd, & Zimbardo,2003; Lyubomirsky, 2008; Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). Of particular inter-est to our VHFP concerns is how individuals treat the past. Zimbardoand Boyd observe:

‘‘it is not the events of the past that most strongly influence our lives.Your attitude towards events in the past matters more than the eventsthemselves. This distinction between your past and your current inter-pretation of it is critical, because it offers hope for change. You cannotchange what happened in the past, but you can change your attitudetoward what happened.’’ (2008: 86).

From a number of studies the researchers conclude that those whoscore highly on the past positive scales tend to be less anxious, morecreative, less depressed and more outgoing. High past positive scoresare also associated with people being happier and having higher selfesteem than those with low scores on this scale. Additional studies sug-gest that a past positive orientation can be cultivated and developedand that people are not trapped by the objective events they have expe-rienced. For example, Emmons and McCullough (2003) conductedstudies in which people were asked over a two month period to reflectpositively on the events of each week. When compared with compara-ble groups who were asked to report anything that happened or agroup who alternatively were asked to report hassles from the pastweek, those assigned to the positive past group were healthier, exer-cised more, showed greater optimism and were happier. Expressinggratitude for what has happened in the past has become an importantconstruct in studies of well-being (Emmons & McCullough, 2004) andcan be seen as a good illustration of Frederickson’s notion that positiveemotions have a broadening and building effect on human function-ing. These results are also in accord with Langer’s psychology of possi-bility in the sense that people can modify and change their views ofthemselves and their world.

An additional approach to time perception is also included in the workof Zimbardo and Boyd. They introduce the use of a ‘‘Who was I?’’ ques-tion format to elicit from respondents dominant ways they would de-scribe themselves in the past. The ‘‘Who was I?’’ question is askedtwenty times so respondents can depict themselves in multiple ways.The researchers then suggest that any highly negative images and iden-tifications be reconsidered. In particular people are encouraged in thetesting procedure to extract positive messages from key identity deter-mining events and use them as lessons for the future. In common withthe Emmons and McCullough approach to developing gratitude, Zim-bardo and Boyd propose that controlling and using the past can not onlymake thinking about it more agreeable but it also avoids seeing previousevents as all controlling, deterministic influences over present circum-stances and future life.

Links to memory

These approaches to viewing the past in positive ways depend tosome extent on the malleability of human memory. The metaphors


and conceptions of human memory which were used by classicalfigures who contemplated how we recalled the world-notable examplesinclude Sigmund Freud and Marcel Proust - tended to see memory asconsisting of layers of well preserved immutable little files waiting to beunearthed by the skills of the psychiatrist or the artist. Experimentalpsychology researchers, starting with Bartlett have unearthed a differ-ent conception (Bartlett, 1932; Sacks, 1995, pp. 163–166; Wiseman,2007, pp. 75–79). Bartlett who never used the term memory, onlythe term remembering, suggested:

‘‘Remembering is. . . an imaginative reconstruction or constructionbuilt out of the relation of our attitude towards a whole mass of orga-nized past reactions or experience and to a little outstanding detailwhich commonly appears in image or language form. It is thus hardlyever really exact, even in the most rudimentary cases of rote recapitu-lation and it is not at all important that it should be so.’’ (cited inSacks, 1995, p. 164)

Bartlett’s notion of a ‘‘little outstanding detail’’ will possibly be famil-iar to those who reflect on the experience of travelling to a once familiarplace. The trigger for the memory may be a sound, a sign or a significantscent from the past which activates the recall. Yet, as Lynch points outthere is not one past but multiple days which have preceded us, so theVHFP experience is not unearthing a neatly layered archaeological orgeological record of time but is built on a jumble of sense impressionsand relationships across months and years.

Importantly and in summary, it can be argued following much of thepositive psychology writing on time perception and positive emotionsthat the VHFP experience can be an emotionally rich, identity affirm-ing one provided that the encounter is approached with a strong senseof extracting benefits rather than recalling historical difficulties.

RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

Armed with these linked ideas in human emotions, time perception,and the nature of memory it is possible to propose a set of studies to ex-plore the VHFP topic. The proposed studies cover a range of researchstyles and approaches and may appeal to researchers with different par-adigms and conceptual skills. A clear view can be expressed that these re-search opportunities include both studies done in positivist and post-positivist traditions as well as work informed by a constructivist and lessdeterministic framework. In particular the rich resources of travel writ-ing, as well as approaches built on photography and the stimuli of food,and music linked to time perception offer creative opportunities withinsome of the thematic possibilities described below. This section seeks tofulfil the second aim of this paper which was directed at initiating studiesin this area of interest.

Autobiographical Analyses

Contemporary research tools enable analysts to consider largeamounts of text. Using this approach the lexicon of expressions and


experiences noted in autobiographies and germane to our interest ofVHFP travel could be usefully explored. The work could be descriptivein nature or hypothesis driven given that the model of consumptionemotions reviewed earlier predicts a set of affective reactions to theexperience. Indicative work in this genre includes the study by Press-man and Cohen (2007) who assessed autobiographies with word countprograms and established links between personal and social supportphrases and the life span of the authors.

Travel Blogs

The published autobiographical accounts which have been carefullycrafted by novelists and well known individuals could be supplementedby the interrogation of traveller blog sites. In recent studies in tourismthe extent of this resource is increasingly being appreciated and againcould be used in this context to detect patterns and categories of expe-rience (cf. Schaad, 2008; Woodside, Cruickshank, & Dehuang, 2007).Differences in the sources of the visitors and their destinations couldbe systematically coded and identity concerns and attitudes to changeexamined.

Social Representations

The embodiment of attitudes and widely held views about topics cansometimes be found in artistic resources. For example, there is a richcorpus of music dealing with the concepts of returning home and revis-iting familiar places (Gibson & Connell, 2005). Often this music hasstrong emotional appeal and accessing the themes in this kind of mate-rial could constitute studies defining the hegemonic social representa-tions which influence VHFP travel. Similarly, the exploration of goinghome themes in films, television programs and documentaries mightbe material for helping identify core views of the experiences reportedon this topic. More broadly visual research methods in tourism havethe potential to offer new windows into the way tourists and communi-ties view the VHFP experience (Rakic & Chambers, 2011).

On Site Experiences

Attentive observation and recording of the on site experiences ofthose who return to familiar places and former homes could offer com-monalities in the way people approach the experience. The affectiveneuroscience material combined with the triggers of change identifi-able through the mindfulness models together suggest that attentionto the sensory inputs might assist an understanding of how individualsbecome attuned to the changes in the sites they visit. Interpretive phe-nomenological analysis which offers one pathway to capture the on-sitemeanings people give to their experiences could be employed in thiskind of work (Smith, 2004; Reid, Flowers and Larkin, 2005).


Serial Time

The past, as suggested earlier, is not one uniform slice of people’slives and, following Lynch’s work, it could be informative to trace theextent to which visited settings provide cues to different previous yearsor decades. An array of research questions can be constructed toaddress this topic. Some studies could be directed at seeking to under-stand how people remember places over time (What was this place likeat time X?) while others could be more concerned with people’s selfperceptions across time. The use of Zimbardo’s ‘‘Who was I tech-nique?’’ might be usefully incorporated into such research.

Locational Variability

In the web of experiences noted as constituting the VHFP topic it ispossible to suggest differences in people’s experience according to therate and extent of change in the revisited location. The challenges herecould be addressed by initially exploring the variability of experiencesin focus groups research. The experiences of returning to the contrast-ing situations of little changed or drastically altered locations might bea topic which could be explored in the discussion formats of focusgroup studies. The focus group format could be employed in multipledestinations and offer comparative information and publicationopportunities for teams of cooperating tourism researchers (Jennings,2010).

Links to VFR Research

Another direction for research effort lies in studies distinguishingVHFP travel from VFR travel. As discussed earlier the linkages betweenthese two categories are intricate and carefully distinguishing themmay offer some foundations for tourism marketing. For example,VHFP marketing could be seen as augmenting VFR travel or be castas a separate entity in its own right. Experimental studies could bedeveloped where scenarios are manipulated such that respondentsare asked to indicate their preferences for combinations of the VFRand VHFP factors. The conceptual underpinnings of this effort liesin considering the topophilia concept where people could be attractedback to locations not because of relationship based links but because ofsentimental attachments to specific landscapes and settings.

Responses to VHFP Marketing

Certain kinds of incentive travel businesses already deploy thethemes of celebrating reunions and returning to changed settings.Every location has its own diaspora and tourism promotional effortsto encourage revisits to see the contemporary character of locationswhich individuals may not have seen for many years offer a new form


of marketing effort. Importantly, for many places this covert market ofthose who were once associated with a community may not need to bepersuaded to come through itemising the location’s tourism appealbut could be attracted more simply by emphasising change and thechance to refresh one’s memory. Direct evaluation of such marketingcampaigns could extend core tourism marketing research (cf. Morri-son & Hay, 2010). Such studies could be linked to or augment the workbeing conducted on genealogical and legacy tourism.

Virtual VHFP Travel

Some elements of the VHFP experience could be simulated by mon-itoring people’s reactions to contemporary Google map presentationsand images of relevant locations. Attention to how people respond inthink aloud protocols to virtual travel around remembered settings of-fers a quick simulation of the visual component of the VHFP encoun-ters. The kinds of expressions individuals deploy to describe seeingsites which have changed or which are in transition could be a pathwayto identifying variables relevant to on site studies. Studies by Tussyad-iah and Fesenmaier (2009) provide a model for this kind of virtual tra-vel research.

Survey Work

Constructing detailed surveys built on potential explanatory vari-ables likely to influence the kinds of emotional and identity connectedoutcomes described earlier could be valuable in ordering the influ-ences on VHFP travel. Some of the variables which can be suggestedhere include not just the obvious demographic profiling factors ofage, length of residence in locations and community size but couldembrace the measures described by Zimbardo and Boyd (1999,2008) to assess reactions to time.

A Test case. In response to the request by reviewers to provide someinitial data which might help stimulate research on the VHFP topic amodest appraisal of the emotional range which people report aboutthis topic was conducted. The work was presented to the participantsas a study on emotions and places. Following the approach ofMehrabian and Russell (1974) for affective environmental assessmentsa sample of mixed age University students (N=130) were asked think ofa specific location they had known such as an earlier home, a favouritepast holiday destination or a town where they grew up. They were askedto write down the specific location and then record three feelings theyhave had to describe how they felt on returning to this destination.Only responses from those participants (N=109) who had a clear mem-ory of this repeat experience were considered further in the data. Nextthe respondents were asked to select from a prepared list of emotionsany clear feelings which they associated with the revisit. The list of emo-


tions provided was derived from the arc of consumption emotionsreported by Richins (1997).

The results of this test case revealed three important points. Therewas a close correspondence between the spontaneously elicited emo-tions and the responses to the provided emotions from the Richins list-ing. The dominant emotional responses resided in the themed areas ofcalm, peaceful, joyful, feeling comforted and sentimental. The re-sponses reported by more than 10% of the respondents are indicatedin Figure 1 which also indicates the overlap with the spontaneously re-ported feelings about returning to these locations.

A second point of interest lies in the infrequently reported but con-sistently reported negative emotions. Both in the Richins listing and inthe spontaneously generated common phrases and chosen words thereis a small ‘‘tail’’ in the distribution of responses reporting sadness,anger, irritation and depression, worry and guilt. These terms are onlyused by between 5 to 10 percent respondents but the view that return-ing to a once familiar place can have a potential dark side is notable.The view can be offered that through social change, personal circum-stances, and the passing of family members, the VHFP experience canbe a personal thanotourism for a small but consistent number ofrespondents. The third notable direction from this select illustrativecase lies in the links to recent work on the emotional experiences oftourists to hedonic holiday destinations. Hosany and Gilbert (2010)propose that the emotional range for destinations can be capturedby three factors which they label joy, love and positive surprise. An

Figure 1. The most frequently chosen emotions (N=109) from a provided setof 47 consumption emotions (source: Richins, 1997). (Emotions or synonymsfor these emotions which were also reported in a spontaneously generatedformat more than 10 times were calm, peaceful, joyful, comfortable,sentimental, pleased/happy and excited. In addition at home/like home,relaxed and sad were also reported more than 10 times.)


inspection of Figure 1 reinforces their work with these kinds of themesalso accounting for most of the affective reactions reported. It is aninteresting addition and challenge though to pursue the less commonbut potentially important negative surprise component of tourists’ re-sponses unearthed in the present reflective work.

DISCUSSION

Two aims shaped the material presented in this analysis. The first ofthese aims was directed at providing a detailed understanding of thepsychological forces at work when people return to previous homesand familiar places. In meeting this aim a pathway of influences wasoutlined. It was argued that the process of revisiting home and familiarplaces is at first a sensory experience which triggers affective responsesembedded in core human emotional systems. Nevertheless, the goinghome experience is not simply emotional even though it may offer par-ticularly strong cues reflecting a part of the human emotional range. Itis also a cognitive process. Sensory and environmental cues triggermindfulness and confront tourists and visitors with identity issuesand images of change. Higher levels of consciousness modify the basicemotional response and consistent with ideas about consumption emo-tions produce a set of mildly positive and not overly active responsesincluding nostalgia, melancholy and gratitude. It was then suggestedfollowing a consideration of work on time perception and the psychol-ogy of possibility that the VHFP experience if approached with a posi-tive past time orientation could assist in affirming identity and promotewellbeing.

This descriptive account and the suggested sequences in the VHFPexperience offer the potential for tourism researchers to explore arange of issues in identity, time perceptions and place related mean-ings. Some of the possible research efforts arising from these possibil-ities were outlined and briefly reviewed. The statements about researchoptions were provided to meet the second aim of the work -that is tostimulate a research effort by tourism researchers on this newly identi-fied form of travel.

There are several broad issues germane to this consideration ofVHFP travel. The identification of travel to familiar places and previoushome locations is a reminder that the approach we have taken to studyexperiences in much tourism research is rather one dimensional (Uri-ely, 2005). More specifically, tourism analysts have tended to access andapproach the memories of a short term holiday and its embedded con-tacts with people and places with a single point of recall. The layeredand chaotic memory of time and its discussion in VHFP travel remindsus that returning to people’s experiences on other occasions and seek-ing further recall of pivotal moments and events may provide supple-mentary and alternative renditions of experience. We might considermore work in documenting travellers’ experiences at multiple pointsfollowing their travels.


Additionally the sequence of psychological processes which have beenoutlined for VHFP travel may have a wider applicability. In recent docu-mentations of the nature of experiences an array of suggested key pointshave been outlined (Bowen & Clarke, 2009; Cutler & Carmichael, 2010;Uriely, 2005). The category scheme which most accurately reflects thediscussion in this review of VHFP is that of Schmitt (2003) who stresseda sensory, affective, cognitive, relationship and behavioural set of themesin assessing experience. Schmitt’s work did not identify a sequence orpsychological processes linking these components but if these core pro-cess elements are supplemented with a broad panorama of the outcomesof experience (identity, well-being and health, learning, impacts) thenmuch of the discussion on tourists’ travel is neatly encapsulated.

A further and final broad issue worthy of attention lies in using thisexample of a special kind of tourist experience to reflect on and re-as-sess the demand that tourism studies be theoretically enhanced. Such acall for better and more theoretical work in tourism is common with arange of scholars continuing to express disappointment that the fieldof interest has not generated more conceptual substance (cf. Aramb-erri, 2010; Nash, 2007; Smith, 2010; Smith and Lee, 2010). Perhaps thisdemand for theoretical insights is a little misguided and we can attimes look at the study field of tourism in a different way. The recastingof our view of the field may be that it is very useful to identify distinctivephenomenon and subsets of behaviour and social organisation whichchallenge the formulations of existing social science approaches. Inthis view tourism topics and their identification offer special test casesof existing approaches to understanding social life. For example, thereare no studies in human memory research which consider in any detailthe time dependent qualities of the going home experience nor arethere attempts to track how people respond in such naturalistic set-tings to these memory and time perception challenges. Perhaps to mi-mic the expression used by Frederickson and allied to the challengesoffered by Jafari (2005) to connect to other disciplines, the way tobroaden and build tourism study lies in continuing to identify the dis-tinctive features of human behaviour, experience and organisationwhich tourism introduces to social life. It can then become a joint so-cial science and tourism research effort to test and evaluate the ade-quacy of the conceptual schemes and theoretical approaches whichspan the interest areas of human conduct and its management.

STATEMENT OF CONTRIBUTION

The identification of a new kind of tourist related activity where indi-viduals return to previous homes and familiar places is identified.Importantly an integrated set of powerful conceptual schemes andideas including studies in neuroscience, time perception, emotionsand memory are used to interpret this experience. It is also linked toexisting tourism work on repeat visits and VFR travel. A feature ofthe manuscript is the shaping of research possibilities across severalstyles of research using these ideas.


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Submitted 2 March 2011. Final version 21 September 2011. Accepted 16 November 2011.Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: David Harrison

THE EXPERIENCE OF VISITING HOME AND FAMILIAR PLACES

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