Год выпуска: 2012 Автор: Valentina Torno Издательство: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing Страниц: 68 ISBN: 9783659177170
Описание
Tourism is the largest industry worldwide but globalization, rising fuel prices, environmental laws and consumers’ green conscience are constraining further expansion. Indeed, many authors maintain that the desire to travel is steering towards greener, cheaper forms of tourism, such as Virtual Tourism, i.e. the virtual exploration of computer-generated environments. This book engages with this fairly understudied phenomenon, trying to establish its theoretical grounds. Using in-depth participatory methods that were adapted for online research, the author explores the world of Second Life (a 3D social virtual world available over the Internet) in order to understand travel behaviour, motivations and experiences of virtual tourists. Primary findings are related to existing theory and analysed through a variety of well-known socio-psychological and anthropological tourism frameworks. The study concludes that a combination of Internet social studies and post-modern approaches are best...
