IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/touman/v46y2015icp398-407.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘Journeys in Second Life’ – Iranian Muslim women's behaviour in virtual tourist destinations

Author

Listed:
  • Tavakoli, Rokhshad
  • Mura, Paolo

Abstract

While corporeal patterns of mobility continue to increase, virtual tourism has become a widespread social practice in contemporary society. Despite this, tourists' experiences in virtual tourist destinations remain relatively unexplored. This is particularly true if Iranian women's gendered identities and patterns of behaviour in virtual tourist destinations are referred to. In order to fill this gap, this paper explores Iranian female tourists' patterns of behaviour travelling in Second Life. Driven by an interpretivist approach, this study employs virtual ethnography, also known as netnography. The findings show that in virtual tourist spaces the participants reject ‘subordinated’ gender-based stereotypes concerning Muslim women's bodily representations in Iran. However, their gendered performances also accept other ‘subordinated’ stereotypical representations of femininity, mostly reiterated by the media in many Western societies. Overall, this paper provides a more in-depth understanding of Iranian women's tourist behaviour in virtual tourist destinations, a topic neglected by tourism academics.

Suggested Citation

  • Tavakoli, Rokhshad & Mura, Paolo, 2015. "‘Journeys in Second Life’ – Iranian Muslim women's behaviour in virtual tourist destinations," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 398-407.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:touman:v:46:y:2015:i:c:p:398-407
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2014.07.015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517714001472
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tourman.2014.07.015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guttentag, Daniel A., 2010. "Virtual reality: Applications and implications for tourism," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 637-651.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tavakoli, Rokhshad & Mura, Paolo, 2018. "Netnography in tourism – Beyond Web 2.0," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 190-192.
    2. Mura, Paolo, 2015. "Perceptions of authenticity in a Malaysian homestay – A narrative analysis," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 225-233.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Talwar, Shalini & Kaur, Puneet & Escobar, Octavio & Lan, Sai, 2022. "Virtual reality tourism to satisfy wanderlust without wandering: An unconventional innovation to promote sustainability," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 128-143.
    2. Rickly, Jillian M., 2022. "A review of authenticity research in tourism: Launching the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on authenticity," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    3. Hafizah Rosli & Norfadilah Kamaruddin, 2020. "Visitor Experience’s on Digital Media Technology for the Museum Exhibition in Malaysia: A Preliminary Findings," International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation, International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI), vol. 7(2), pages 245-248, February.
    4. Bo Wendy Gao & Chris Zhu & Hongmei Song & Ianthe M. Belisle Dempsey, 2022. "Interpreting the perceptions of authenticity in virtual reality tourism through postmodernist approach," Information Technology & Tourism, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 31-55, March.
    5. Paolo Mura & Rokhshad Tavakoli & Saeed Pahlevan Sharif, 2017. "‘Authentic but not too much’: exploring perceptions of authenticity of virtual tourism," Information Technology & Tourism, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 145-159, June.
    6. Huang, Yu-Chih & Backman, Sheila J. & Backman, Kenneth F. & Moore, DeWayne, 2013. "Exploring user acceptance of 3D virtual worlds in travel and tourism marketing," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 490-501.
    7. Xi, Nannan & Hamari, Juho, 2021. "Shopping in virtual reality: A literature review and future agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 37-58.
    8. Weaver, David B. & Lawton, Laura J., 2017. "A new visitation paradigm for protected areas," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 140-146.
    9. Xu, Feifei & Buhalis, Dimitrios & Weber, Jessika, 2017. "Serious games and the gamification of tourism," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 244-256.
    10. Roland Schegg & Brigitte Stangl, 2018. "Special section on recommendations and analytics in tourism," Information Technology & Tourism, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 1-4, April.
    11. Kostyk, Alena & Sheng, Jie, 2023. "VR in customer-centered marketing: Purpose-driven design," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 225-236.
    12. Schiopu, Andreea Fortuna & Hornoiu, Remus Ion & Padurean, Ana Mihaela & Nica, Ana-Maria, 2022. "Constrained and virtually traveling? Exploring the effect of travel constraints on intention to use virtual reality in tourism," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    13. Agapito, Dora & Valle, Patrícia & Mendes, Júlio, 2014. "The sensory dimension of tourist experiences: Capturing meaningful sensory-informed themes in Southwest Portugal," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 224-237.
    14. Nguyen Thien Duy & Subhra R. Mondal & Nguyen Thi Thanh Van & Pham Tien Dzung & Doan Xuan Huy Minh & Subhankar Das, 2020. "A Study on the Role of Web 4.0 and 5.0 in the Sustainable Tourism Ecosystem of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-19, September.
    15. Kim, Myung Ja & Hall, C. Michael, 2019. "A hedonic motivation model in virtual reality tourism: Comparing visitors and non-visitors," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 236-249.
    16. Elena Marchiori & Evangelos Niforatos & Luca Preto, 2018. "Analysis of users’ heart rate data and self-reported perceptions to understand effective virtual reality characteristics," Information Technology & Tourism, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 133-155, April.
    17. Yashna Beeharry & Girish Bekaroo & Devina Bussoopun & Chandradeo Bokhoree & Michael Robert Phillips, 2021. "Perspectives of leisure operators and tourists on the environmental impacts of coastal tourism activities: a case study of Mauritius," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(7), pages 10702-10726, July.
    18. Zhou, Qilou (Bill) & Zhang, Jie & Zhang, Honglei & Ma, Jinhai, 2015. "A structural model of host authenticity," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 28-45.
    19. Alejandra Ospina-Bohórquez & Sara Rodríguez-González & Diego Vergara-Rodríguez, 2021. "On the Synergy between Virtual Reality and Multi-Agent Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-30, April.
    20. Yanfang Zeng & Lihua Liu & Rui Xu, 2022. "The Effects of a Virtual Reality Tourism Experience on Tourist’s Cultural Dissemination Behavior," Tourism and Hospitality, MDPI, vol. 3(1), pages 1-16, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:touman:v:46:y:2015:i:c:p:398-407. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/tourism-management .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.