Overseas tourists negotiating risk at Australian beaches

• Published in: Tourism geographies Vol. 23; no. 5-6; pp. 1073 - 1093
• Main Authors: Walton, Todd R., Shaw, Wendy S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 09.11.2021; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Ambiguity; Australia; Beach; Beaches; Disconnection; edgework; Group norms; hazards; Incoherence; Mixed methods research; Norms; Risk; Safety; Safety behaviour; Tourism; Tourists; Visitors; 澳大利亚; 边缘工作; Australia
• ISSN: 1461-6688; 1470-1340
• DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2019.1666160

Beachgoing experiences are highly desirable among international tourists visiting Australia. Beach use has been popularised in the contemporary Australian imaginary influencing how locals behave at the beach and setting an example to visitors. Many of the behaviours that Australian beach users' display can be classed as risky. How and why tourists enact certain risky behaviours in their attempts to comply with beach going norms in Australia is not well known. The imagined beachgoing psyche of tourists describes a disconnection between pre-conceptions about risk at the beach and the reality of actual risks and hazards. The pursuit of thrill and risk while on holiday work to reconcile tourist attitudes about their often safety-averse behaviours, helping to explain why beach safety is often ignored, accidentally and purposefully. The influence of other social phenomena, such as the amplification of risk, interactive risk and group norms, contribute to tourists' beach behaviours in Australia. Beachgoer questionnaires and interview testimonies triangulated results using a mixed-method-research approach that identifies the mechanisms that lead to an incoherence between understandings of danger and safe behaviours, which were specific to the socio-spatial context of the Australian beach space. There is much ambiguity in the nature of the Australian beach holiday, where the tourist beachgoer can choose between behaviours of escape (to relax) and excite (to take risks). This can lead to the conflation of these contrasting, yet spatially connected, pursuits.