More than sense of place? Exploring the emotional dimension of rural tourism experiences

Abstract

It is widely suggested that participation in rural tourism is underpinned by a sense of rural place or “rurality”. However, although nature and the countryside have long been recognised as a source of spiritual or emotional fulfilment, few have explored the extent to which tourism, itself often claimed to be a sacred experience, offers an emotional/spiritual dimension in the rural context. This paper addresses that literature gap. Using in-depth interviews with rural tourists in the English Lake District, it explores the extent to which, within respondents’ individual understanding of spirituality, a relationship exists between sense of place and deeper, emotional experiences and, especially, whether participation in rural tourism may induce spiritual or emotional responses. The research revealed that all respondents felt a strong attachment to the Lake District; similarly, and irrespective of their openness to spirituality, engaging in rural tourism activities resulted in highly emotive experiences for all respondents, the description/interpretation of such experiences being determined by individual “beliefs”. However, sense of place was not a prerequisite to emotional or spiritual experiences. Being in and engaging with the landscape – effectively becoming part of it – especially through physical activity is fundamental to emotional responses.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 170 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.