Visão de Síntese sobre a Problemática da Motivação Turística
Francisco Dias 
1
1 ISCET – High Institute of Business and Tourism Sciences, Porto, Portugal
To cite this text:
Dias, F. (2009), Visão de Síntese sobre a Problemática da Motivação Turística, Percursos & Ideias, Vol. 1, pp. 117-143.
Abstract
Tourist motivation has been studied under a large scope of perspectives. In this paper, we present a systematic review of several motivation theories, categorizing them according two levels of analysis: micro-level theories, which emphasize psychological and psychosocial mechanisms of motivations; and macro-level theories, which are focused on the social conditions of the modern society that generate the human need and desire to break off, although temporary, the frames of the quotidian life, projecting oneself in the imagined somewhere. At the micro-level, motivation is associated to the following factors: psychocentrism versus alocentrism; satisfaction of the basic needs; curiosity; intrinsic gratification; homeostasis, misbalance e novelty. In turn, the anomie, the search of authenticity and the search of a spiritual centre have been the most important explanations given by the authors that adopt the macro-level of analysis. In the final part of this paper, the authenticity concept is analyzed more closely. Four different perspectives of authenticity are presented: objective authenticity; constructed authenticity; authenticity as simulacrum; and existential authenticity. Proposed by Wang, the existential authenticity means a search of the “authentic self”, in a way that legitimate the individual goal that generates the imaginary underlying the tourist dream.
Keywords
Motivation, Authenticity, Imaginary.