Research Methodology Trends in Tourism Photography

INTRODUCTION

Photography in tourism research has played a critical role in understanding the perception of a destination and the behaviour in it. There is no doubt that over the last forty years, the use of photography techniques as a data collection method in tourism research has increased significantly due to technological innovations (Feighey, 2003; Larsen, 2001; Van House, 2011), the mass transportation of tourists (Larsen, 2001; WTO, 2016), and instant global communication (Mak 2017; Lo, McKercher, Lo, Cheung, & Law, 2011).

The summations of photography-focused tourism studies have added new perspectives to the tourism literature landscape in areas such as tourist perception (Garrod, 2008; MacKay & Couldwell, 2004; Urry, 1992), behaviour (Markwell, 1997; Noy, 2014), and experiences (Cederholm, 2004; Fung & Jim, 2015), including destination image (Mak, 2017; Stepchenkova & Zhan, 2013), tourism development (Brickell, 2012; Haywood, 1990) and management (Garrod, 2007; Lo & McKercher, 2015). As a result, the use of photography in scientific research has expanded to encompass a range of emerging areas of interest, such as the ethnographic effects of tourism (Neumann, 1992; Scarles, 2010), marine tourism (Bryson, Duce, Harris, Webster, Thompson, Vila-Concejo, & Williams, 2016; Prideaux & Coghlan, 2010), land development for tourism (Voulvouli, 2012; Hudak & Wessman, 1998), analysing cultural heritage photography using computer aided design (Styliadis, 2008; Styliadis & Sechidis, 2011), virtual tourism in gaming (Poremba, 2007), travel fashion (Pritchard & Morgan, 2005) and food tourism (Liu, Norman, & Pennington-Gray, 2013). Therefore, this research defines photographic tourism literature as a study that applies any photography technique as a data collection method with tourism perspective.

However, no study has yet attempted to investigate the global development of published tourism research with integrated photographic methods over time. For example, little is known about the tourism fields (for instance, management, history, geography or culture) and contexts (such as perception, motivation, experience or destination image) in which photography has been applied as a data collection method. Similarly, the samples (like; literature material, tourists, residences, students or online images) and sampling methods (in the case of; purposive, convenience or random sampling) used by scholars in photographic tourism literature remains largely unexamined. Moreover, even less is understood about the way researchers collect visual data (whether by; researcher found imagery from books, postcards or magazines, online photography or respondent-employed photography) and the supporting methods (like; interviews, observation, questionnaires or diaries) they employ with photographic techniques. Lastly, an insufficient amount is known about the range of qualitative and quantitative methods and tests used by authors in photographic tourism research.

Thus, a study examining the trends of tourism research with integrated photographic methods subject matters, contexts, qualitative and quantitative approaches, and methods of analysis would potentially offer great benefits to scholars overall understanding of the photographic tourism literature landscape and provide a foundation for future studies. As a result, this will create more focused research and methodological development. For example, in the areas of tourist’s gaze and experience (Urry, 1992; Larsen, 2008). Whereas, the practical implications would lead further investigations advancing destination image organisers and managers understanding in areas such official marketing imagery verses tourist’s photography (Stepchenkova & Zhan, 2013; Scott, Green, & Fairley, 2016) or how a destination is consumed using geotagged tourist photography and official statistics (Kádár, 2014). Government bodies could also profit by incorporating various photographic methods into local or national studies thus quicken their research processes (Loughlin, 2013).

Research Objectives

The purpose of this study is to provide a contemporary overview of the photographic tourism literature landscape. The research questions of this study are to identify:

What are the specific tourism fields of the studies?

What are the contexts of the studies?

What are samples used in the studies?

What are the sampling methods used in the studies?

What are the photographic methods used in the studies?

What are the accompanying procedures used in the studies?

What are the qualitative data analyses methods used in the studies?

What are the quantitative data analyses techniques used in the studies?

What countries are conducting photographic tourism research?

Photographic Tourism Research: Literature Review

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