Innocents Abroad: Attitude Change toward Hosts

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of social distance, prior expectations, and trip experience on post-trip attitudes in multiple destinations. This study is based on surveys conducted with two groups of students: 1) a group participating in a summer study abroad program to the South Pacific or to Europe, and 2) a control group. The results show that attitude changes were positive towards Europeans, negative towards Australians, and mixed towards Fijians. This study supports the expectation value theory, but contradicts the cultural distance theory of attitude change. Further, the results show that experience with non-tourism related services played an important role toward attitude change.