Happiness Through Vacationing: Just a Temporary Boost or Long-Term Benefits?

By J. Nawijn. 2011

119 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Does vacationing add to our happiness in the long run? This question was addressed in a study of 3,650 Dutch citizens who reported their leisure travel every 3 months during 2 years and rated their happiness at the end of each year. Participants who had been on vacation appeared to be marginally happier, in terms of hedonic level of affect, than those who had not. This difference in Affect balance between vacationers and non-vacationers is probably due to a very minor causal effect of vacationing on hedonic level of affect. Possibly, vacationing is positively reminisced and these memories allow for the prevalence of more positive affect in people’s lives. Happiness did not predict vacationing. The effect of holiday trips on vacationers’ happiness is mostly short-lived; among vacationers, happiness was unrelated to the number of trips and days spent on vacation. A separate analysis of vacationers, who value vacationing most, yielded the same results. Implications for future research are discussed.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1d2480537c79c8e3d1fe4c96b55e6a567b9e94f5

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Citations in the corpus

Memorable tourism experiences: antecedents and outcomes (2018, background): “the creation of happiness in the tourism experience (Nawijn, 2011a).”
Resident Attitudes to Tourism and Their Effect on Subjective Well-Being (2012, background): “…2004), a large number of journal papers were published recently (Corvo 2010; De Bloom et al. 2010; De Bloom et al. 2009; Filep and Deery 2010; McCabe 2010; Michalkó et al. 2009; Nawijn 2010, 2011a, 2011b; Nawijn et al. 2010; Nawijn and Peeters 2010; Pearce 2009; Sirgy 2010; Sirgy et al. 2011).”
Family and Relationship Benefits of Travel Experiences (2013, background): “This is not necessarily bad news for the tourism industry; in fact, it is good news, as this means that people are best off by booking many trips” (Nawijn 2011, p. 661).”
A mindful shift: an opportunity for mindfulness-driven tourism in a post-pandemic world (2020, background): “Tourism marketing tries to let tourists believe that participating in tourism experiences will make them happier (Nawijn, 2011).”
Tourism and wellbeing (2017, unknown): “…& Ross, 2010; Richards, 1999; Sirgy, 2010; Sirgy, Kruger, Lee, & Yu, 2011; Uysal, Perdue, & Sirgy, 2012), ‘happiness’ (e.g. Filep & Deery, 2010; Nawijn, Marchand, Veenhoven, & Vingerhoets, 2010, and Nawijn, 2011a; 2011b), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2017.05.006 0160-7383/ 2017 Elsevier Ltd.”
Positive psychology and tourist well-being: A systematic literature review (2020, methodology): “For example, the study by Nawijn (2011) included 3,650 Dutch citizens who reported their leisure travel every 3 months over 2 years and rated their happiness at the end of each year.”
How Do We Feel on Vacation? A Closer Look at How Emotions Change over the Course of a Trip (2013, background): “Study participants scored higher on positive emotions than they did on negative emotions, which is consistent with findings from earlier studies (cf. Nawijn 2011a; Zins 2002).”