Transformative process of adventure tourists as cross-boundary learners

This study examines adventure tourists who have recently become transformative tourists.Transformative tourism, based on transformative learning theory, induces internal change through accidental learning and discovery from disorienting dilemmas.Therefore, viewing adventure tourists as learners, the study hypothesizes explicitly that they are cross-boundary learners.It focuses on the noncognitive abilities that facilitate this learning and investigates how these abilities are linked to transformation.Using qualitative comparative analysis, the study investigates how learning ability, behavior (agency), and future transformation interact among foreign adventure tourists (N = 26) in totally protected areas in Sarawak.The findings confirm the hypothesis, revealing that tourists possess the necessary non-cognitive abilities for cross-boundary learning and transformation.Notably, even without demonstrating agency, they achieved self-transformation due to their high non-cognitive abilities.This suggests they can become cross-boundary learners and that a process exists that allows them to flexibly select and generate their preferred context for either knowledge exploration, knowledge exploitation, or both, depending on the situation.The cycle of cross-boundary learning indicates that self-transformation can be both a motivation and an outcome of travel.This insight may help to bridge different epistemological perspectives on selftransformation in tourism psychology and tourism anthropology/sociology.