An Exploratory Study of Slow Tourist Experience Formation

The formation of slow tourist experience remains underexplored despite its great significant theoretical and practical implications. Through thematic analysis of semi-structured interview and blog texts, this study proposes a research framework – centered on slow tourists and integrating specific settings and tourists’ interactive actions – to explore how slow tourist experiences are formed within particular experiencescapes. Three key findings are emerged: first, the study identifies and refines four dimensions of slow tourism experiencescapes: atmosphere, landscape, “nearby” local life, and social context; second, the analysis of horizontal and vertical dimensions demonstrates the inherent depth and multi-layered nature of slow tourist experiences.; finally, three patterns (i.e. purposive, discursive and social) are clarified, capturing various possibilities for the formation paths of slow tourist experience.