6 Perception, evaluation, and impact of social interactions
6.2 Perception and evaluation of social interactions
6.2.2 Perceived depth of social interactions
Interviewees were also asked to assess the perceived depth of their specific reported social interactions as either superficial or profound. They were not provided with any criteria clarifying when an interaction would qualify as either but offered their individual interpretations and explanations as to why they had perceived their interactions a certain way. This led to the distinction between three different perceived depths: ‘superficial, ‘profound’ and ‘neutral’ as being somewhere in between the two extremes. In this context, both duration and conversation topics in connection with the interaction participant relationship were frequently mentioned to explain the distinctions between superficial and profound – factors that have been found to be dependent upon the environmental and personal context of interactions.
In addition, individual attitudes and the relationship between interaction participants strongly contribute to the interaction process and subsequently to its perception.
Interaction depth perception is thus a multi-layered construct. Conversation topics and interaction duration are dimensions of superficial and profound interactions, yet are dependent upon a variety of other influential factors. Figure 6.1 provides a conceptualization of interaction depth perception, illustrating the impact of these factors and how these, in combination or separately, can contribute to a certain depth.
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Travel style and individual characteristics:
Large group constellation
Introverted personality
Low assigned importance to contacts with other visitors Environmental and personal context:
Time restrictions
Additional tasks and activities
Factors encouraging superficially perceived interactions Factors encouraging profoundly perceived interactions
Travel style and individual characteristics:
Small group constellation
Extroverted personality
High assigned importance to contacts with other visitors Environmental and personal context:
No time restrictions
Fewer additional tasks and activities
Social interaction dimensions:
Short duration
Non-personal conversation topics
Social interaction dimensions:
Long duration
Personal conversation topics
Interaction participant relationship:
Lack of interest
Lack of mutual likeability
Interaction participant relationship:
Interest
Mutual likeability
Figure 6.1 Factors impacting interaction depth perception
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At the core of interaction depth perception are the dimensions of social interactions that were used by interviewees to illustrate how they would distinguish between a superficial and profound social interaction.
“Probably the topics you talk about, ‘cause you can disagree about profound things maybe? Yeah, it’s the topics, but there’s also the element of personal interaction, who you’re talking to. If it’s interesting people, you talk about different things, about their lives, their attitudes maybe. Superficial, that’s just travel talk. Where have you been, where are you going, what do you do.”
Female backpacker (USA)
“I would say that superficial conversations are about travelling. That’s where I’m from, that’s why I’m here, that’s how I’m travelling, that’s where I’m going. When you talk longer, about more personal things, then it gets more profound for me.”
Male young FIT (Germany)
“It’s more superficial, I think it’s also because of the time pressure. We don’t have much time here, so our conversations with others are mostly short, we talk about our travels, about recommendations, but there’s no time to really get to know people.”
Female mature FIT (Netherlands)
Those interactions that were perceived as superficial were frequently reported to not exceed the initial conversation topics identified in Section 5.3.2. They were thus shorter and less personal in nature.
“Ah it was just tourist chat, really, just friendly chit chat. As I said, we only talked about where we were from and our travels, so I’d definitely say that was superficial.”
Male backpacker (UK)
“I think superficial, yes. We didn’t talk about personal things, mostly about travel.”
Male young FIT (Denmark)
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“No, not so deep, very superficial. Just friendly small talk, the small talk you always have.”
Female mature FIT (Netherlands)
Profound interactions on the other hand lasted longer and included a more personal conversational element. Interviewees often reported that these conversations went beyond just superficial personal information to include a variety of topics that allowed them a deeper insight into the personality of their interaction participants, based upon commonalities, mutual interest, and likeability.
“I met a French girl, and that was more profound, because we were talking about where she was living, she was living in Japan, and I now live in Canada, so we had kind of the same living abroad thing, and more things in common. The same age too, the English girl was younger and sometimes it’s hard to relate.”
Female backpacker (France)
“It was really profound actually. Yeah, because we talked about all our experiences, at home and travelling, and why they really do it and what they’ve seen. How they see things, how it changes them.”
Female young FIT (Australia)
“It was profound. This couple was kind of like a little bit of an older version of my husband and myself, like ten years older. And they were going in retirement, doing what we’re doing now, wishing they had done it our age.
And so it was just a common bond of lifestyle and sense of adventure.”
Female mature FIT (USA)
Perceived depth thus results from the combination of interaction dimensions and interaction participant relationship, which are in turn dependent upon travel behaviour, individual attitudes, and the environmental and personal context (see Figure 6.1). As these factors also influence the occurrence of interactions (as illustrated in Figure 5.5), differences could be found between initiated and responded interactions. Over half of the initiated interactions were perceived as superficial, a third as more profound and the remaining ones as neutral or between the two ends of
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the scale. This most commonly occurred when social interactions touched upon but did not elaborate on topics that, in the interviewees’ opinion, were personal and would therefore contribute to a profound perception. In contrast, only eight of the responded interactions were regarded as profound, while the majority were perceived as superficial. Initiated interactions that often occurred in contexts that allowed for longer interactions were thus far more likely to reach a profound depth. Table 6.1 provides an overview of the depth distribution by environmental setting and interaction type. Due to the often small sample sizes, these are again only indicative.
Table 6.1 Perceived depth by environmental setting and interaction type Accommodation Waiting for
transport
On transport
Initiated Responded Initiated Responded Initiated Responded
% n % n % n % n % n % n
Overall 100 30 100 24 100 3 100 5 100 8 100 3
Superficial 53 16 79 19 100 3 100 5 38 3 - -
Profound 27 8 21 5 - - - - 63 5 67 2
Neutral 20 6 - - - - - - - - 33 1
Organized activities Independent activities
Initiated Responded Initiated Responded
% n % n % n % n
Overall 100 6 100 2 100 10 100 15
Superficial 67 4 100 2 70 7 93 14
Profound 33 2 - - 30 3 7 1
Neutral - - - - - - - -
Interactions on transport and in accommodation settings were frequently rated as profound or neutral. This supports the previous findings emphasizing the relevance of restricted settings combined with a longer length of stay and less additional tasks/activities (see Figure 5.6). Interactions in less constant settings such as waiting for transport or during independent tourist activities on the other hand showed shorter interactions due to their time restrictions. Only a few interactions in these settings were perceived as profound, most commonly when they were initiated by interviewees who could choose favourable circumstances. Interactions during
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organized activities are more likely to be superficial, although the contextual circumstances are similar to those on transport settings. This was found to be due to the impact of both the tour guide and the activities and sights, these being factors that often prohibit a more personal connection between interaction participants. Although personal conversation topics are included in these interactions, they do not go into much detail as both the tour-related distractions and the group size did not allow for this to happen. Group size and constellation was also repeatedly mentioned as a factor, with larger groups, regardless of the setting, sometimes discouraging more profound interactions.
“It’s hard to say, but no, it wasn’t actually personal, but I think there were too many people for that. Because we were quite a large group, sitting at the table, and then, yes, I think it’s superficial with that many people.”
Female young FIT (Germany)
“When I was travelling with my friend (…) the encounters were more superficial because you just didn’t spend so much time with them but more with the friend.”
Female backpacker (Germany)
The impact of interaction context suggests that backpackers would show the highest percentage of profound interactions, while mature FITs appear to have less opportunity to reach this level of depth when interacting with other visitors. Table 6.2 however shows that mature FITs not only reported more profound interactions than their younger counterparts; they also considered more interactions as neutral, therefore reporting fewer superficial interactions.
Table 6.2 Perceived depth by visitor type
Backpackers Young FITs Mature FITs
% n % n % n
Overall 100 72 100 22 100 26
Superficial 63 46 85 19 68 18
Profound 31 22 10 2 18 5
Neutral 6 4 5 1 14 3
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This illustrates the importance of individual attitudes towards social contacts with other visitors, as well as the interviewees’ sociability and confirms the segmentation of the sample into two age-based FIT groups. Section 4.2 justified a separation of the FIT segment based upon the differences within these two variables, as young FITs classified themselves as more introverted and placed lesser importance on the social aspect of their holiday. Although the interactions reported by mature FITs tend to be shorter (Table 5.2), their conversation topics less personal (Table 5.4) and they interact less based upon intrinsic antecedents (Figure 4.2), their perceptions of these interactions differ strongly as they were more readily regarded as profound.
Although young FITs could be expected to perceive their interactions as more profound due to the characteristics of their process, they often regard them as superficial – an evaluation that might be assumed to be connected to their lower importance assigned to contacts with other visitors. Additionally, the literature (Section 2.5.4) suggested that prior expectations and experiences would influence the perception and evaluation of social interactions. The majority of interviewees had no expectation towards interacting with other visitors before participating in a superficially perceived interaction, which also barely differed from interactions with other visitors that interviewees had experienced previously throughout their travels.
When looking at profound interactions, nearly a quarter of the visitors mentioned that they did expect some kind of interaction to occur within their respective situation. This can be due to the personal and environmental contexts of profound interactions, as they mostly occurred during their preferred interaction circumstances which enable them to spend more time on visitor-visitor interactions. About a fifth of profound interactions were also regarded as different to other previous interactions, as this level of depth and the corresponding interaction dimensions seems to only be achievable under certain circumstances.
In summary, the perception of the depth of interactions depends upon similar factors to those that encourage or discourage longer and more personal social interactions between visitors as outlined in Figure 5.5. However, the individual attitudes of interviewees appear to play a greater role in how these interactions were perceived.
Perceived depth is thus not solely dependent upon the respective interaction dimensions.
187 6.2.3 Emotional response to social interactions
Having gained insight into how interviewees have perceived interactions with other visitors, this section will now look at their evaluation of these in terms of the emotional responses experienced. Overall, the large majority of all reported social interactions were evaluated as solely positive by interviewees, while no interaction was perceived as explicitly negative. The remaining few interactions however were classified as ‘neutral‘ or ‘neither’, as interviewees reported that these did not provide enough content to allow for a more precise evaluation.
“Well, not positive and not negative, it was one of these normal, they happen all the time, but they’re not big enough to leave an impression.”
Female backpacker (Germany)
“Oh neither way really, it was just one of those things that just happen but don’t have enough meaning if you want. A minute can’t hold enough content to provide meaning.”
Female mature FIT (UK)
These interactions consisted only of very short social interactions such as a greeting, a request to take a photograph or asking for directions. Not surprisingly, these interactions did not contain an intrinsic motivational element (either as an antecedent or as a dynamic motivation) but were based upon conformity or extrinsic needs only.
All other interactions have been perceived as positive by interviewees. While several of them appear to be more trivial in nature when looking at their durations, conversation topics and tendency to be repeated in a similar manner throughout the holiday, even what was commonly referred to as ‘chit chat’ or ‘small talk’ (Section 5.3.2) appears to leave positive impressions.
“Definitely positive, because I learned about things to do at the West Coast when I go down.”
Male backpacker (UK) about a superficially perceived interaction
“Yes, definitely, very positive. Just that she was a very warm, genuine person really.”
Female young FIT (USA) about a superficially perceived interaction
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“Oh it was very good, very good, I really loved it, yeah. We got along really well, and we’ll meet up again while I’m here, definitely.”
Female backpacker (Netherlands) about a profoundly perceived interaction
“It was very positive, yes. They were very enthusiastic about their travels, and this excitement was contagious, the way they described it, with such a passion. Happy people make you happy, don’t they?”
Female mature FIT (Netherlands) about a profoundly perceived interaction The effects of these impressions will now be explored in more detail in the following sections concerned with the impact of visitor-visitor interactions.