This document discusses experiments in tourism research. It defines experiments as operations carried out under controlled conditions to test hypotheses or establish laws. Key aspects of experiments include manipulation of variables and control groups. The document notes that while experiments allow inference of causation, they are rarely used in tourism due to challenges such as lack of funding and difficulty generalizing results. However, information technologies are making it easier to conduct experiments with tourists by facilitating random assignment and measurement. The document argues experiments are important for rigorous methodology and encourages methodological diversity in tourism research.

1. Prof. Ulrike Gretzel, University of Queensland
Experimenting in/with tourism
research
ENTER 2016 PhD Workshop

2. EXPERIMENTS
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3.  = an operation or procedure carried out under
controlled conditions in order to discover an
unknown effect or law, to test or establish a
hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law (Merriam-
Webster, 2016)
 provide insight into cause-and-effect by
demonstrating what outcome occurs when a
particular factor is manipulated (Wikipedia)
EXPERIMENTS
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4.  Manipulation
 Ceteris paribus
EXPERIMENTS
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5.  Study asked Facebook users to download an app.
The app captured the interactions between the
user and 30 randomly selected Facebook friends.
NOT AN EXPERIMENT!!!!!
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6.  Random assignment
 Control group
 Pre-test – Post-test
EXPERIMENTS
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7. Choice
among finite
number of
carefully
manipulated
alternatives
SPECIAL CASE: DISCRETE
CHOICE EXPERIMENTS
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8.  Asch conformity experiment
CLASSIC EXAMPLES
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9. CLASSIC EXAMPLES
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10.  High internal validity and therefore only way to
infer causal relationships!
WHY EXPERIMENTS?
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11.  Four conditions:
1. Association (e.g. when A increases, B
decreases)
2. Time priority (for A to be the cause, it must
come first)
3. Nonspurious relationship (no third factor
influencing both, not fluke of data)
4. Rationale (plausible, logical explanation)
CAUSATION
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12. CORRELATION
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13. • Maturation (change over time, e.g. fatigue, growing older)
• History (external factors change, e.g. flight disaster
between measurements changes attitudes)
• Testing (subjects learn from repeated testing)
• Instrumentation (non-reliable measurement)
• Selection bias (subjects assigned to the different
experimental groups differ in something outside of the
experimental condition, e.g. age, sex): RANDOM
ASSIGNMENT!!!!
• Mortality (subjects drop out)
THREATS TO INTERNAL
VALIDITY
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14. GOLD STANDARD
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15.  Medical experiments/animal experiments
 Role of deception – ethical concerns
BAD REPUTATION
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16. TOURISM EXPERIMENTS
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17.  Preference elicitation manipulations in recommender systems
 Effect of narrative and sensory website design on mental
imagery processing
 Impact of podcast tour designs on national park experience
 Influence of virtual agent designs on recommender system
credibility
 Manipulations of 3D maps of Disneyland and their influence on
spatial presence
 Influence of AR on emotional dimensions of heritage
experiences
LIST EXPERIMENTS
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18.  Threats to external validity: population & ecological
validity – conflict with applied nature of field
 Disciplinary background of tourism researchers
 Lack of funding
 Discrediting of student samples
 Lack of subject pools
 Dynamic phenomena
WHY LACK OF EXPERIMENTS
IN TOURISM?
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19.  Getting experiments
right is hard work!!!
EXPERIMENTS
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20. EXPERIMENTAL EFFECTS
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21. EXPERIMENTAL SHORTCUTS
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22. ONE EXPERIMENT USUALLY
NOT ENOUGH!
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23.  Advantage: Tourists are cheap compared to
chemicals or biological specimen
TOURISM EXPERIMENTS
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24.  Revolutionized A/B testing
ROLE OF IT IN
EXPERIMENTATION
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25. FACEBOOK EXPERIMENT
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26.  Facilitates random assignment
 Measurement
 Increases external validity by creating real-world
like conditions
 Beyond laboratory – facilitates field experiments
 DRAWBACK: lack of control!
ROLE OF IT IN
EXPERIMENTATION
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27.  Methodological rigour – experiments teach us to
think about validity
 Methodological diversity vs. fashion
 Methodological contributions
 Methodological innovation
 Epistemology
BIGGER ISSUES
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28. u.gretzel@business.uq.edu.au
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