‘I had more time to listen to my inner voice’: Zen meditation tourism for Generation Z
Jiayu Wu, Juan Tang, Elizabeth Agyeiwaah
Tourist Studies August 4, 2023 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1177/14687976231189833 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
After attending Zen meditation tourism, Generation Z participants experienced long-term benefits in three areas: Zen practices faded but persisted sporadically in daily life, social connections continued to grow, and self-growth was complex and unstable. The study traced 12 informants through six rounds of interviews after a Zen camp.
Study at a glance
| Design | phenomenology-based ethnography |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 12 |
| Population | Generation Z participants who attended a Zen camp |
| Key finding | Zen meditation tourism provided Generation Z participants with fading yet abiding practices, progressive socialization, and complicated, unstable self-growth after re-entry into daily secular life. |
Abstract
With much academic attention to experiential learning in on-site tourism experiences, the benefits of Zen meditation tourism on Generation Z after their re-entry into daily secular life remains largely unexplored. Drawing on experiential learning theory, this study explores the benefits experienced by participants after Zen meditation tourism in three stages including reflection, learning results, and active experimentation. Employing phenomenology-based ethnography, six consecutive rounds of online face-to-face interviews were conducted with 12 informants who were continuously traced after attending a Zen camp. The study findings revealed long-term positive benefits in three aspects of this generational cohort. First, Zen practices tend to be fading yet abiding after the Zen camp which continues sporadically into daily life. Second, socialisation is continuously progressive; but self-growth is complicated and unstable. Theoretical and practical implications of these novel findings are discussed.