Novice tourists’ play experience in commercial outdoor adventure tourism: The perspective of reversal theory

Soft, commercial outdoor adventure tourism allows mass novice tourists to play through artificial interventions that manufacture risk and keep safeguards. From the perspective of reversal theory, this paper explores how to balance novice adventure tourists' risk perception and protective frame through designs of play forms to reach the optimal playful state. This question is investigated through a case of Chinese tourists' ziplining experiences in Thailand. Through observation and interviews, we find that novice tourists experience risky arousals through their interactive play with the ziplining-themed material environment. The interspersing interpersonal play moderates their interaction with the adventure facilities and helps them foster the protective frame to enjoy the risky arousals as fun. Tourists alternatively experience these two forms of play, and achieve an optimal playful ziplining experience once the protective frame matches their perceived risk. Our study enriches the study of play in tourism by revealing the mechanism of tourists’ play experience in novice commercial adventure tourism. It also broadens the managerial and theoretical perspective of outdoor adventure tourism by proposing a triangle radar model of adventure tourism products. Outdoor adventure tourism managers could design, evaluate and classify adventure tourism products based on the triangle radar model with interpersonal-, facility-, and competency-dominated dimensions proposed in this paper. The combination of interpersonal and facility dimensions could be considered in the design of soft commercial adventure tourism activities as their interplay satisfies novice tourists to taste a risky experience playfully in nature. Adventure facilities with multiple participations and certain flexible play rules, staff with hardcore and soft interactive skills are two necessary conditions to construct interpersonal play in adventure tourism. Play provides managers with an alternative way to connect tourists with nature.