Exploring Chinese Tourists’ Well-Being Through a Confucian Lens: A Multi-Focal Model

Despite exponential growth in research interest in the psychological benefits derived from travel experiences, existing conceptualizations of well-being in tourism predominantly adopt Western perspectives. This conceptual paper proposes a multifocal model for understanding tourist well-being through a Confucian lens. By comparing the five cardinal Confucian virtues with Aristotelian well-being perspectives, this multidimensional framework integrates traditional and modern well-being insights, depicting eleven dimensions of Chinese tourists’ psychological well-being. This manuscript contributes a multi-focal model of Chinese tourist well-being, which extends the traditional one-dimensional Confucian perspectives on well-being toward a two-dimensional framework which includes eudaimonic and hedonic aspects. Future studies should conduct empirical work designed to clarify conceptual and terminological ambiguity and advance discourse on the integration of Eastern perspectives into the study of tourist well-being.