Case Study Research in Tourism

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

As in other social sciences fields, case studies in tourism have mistakenly been regarded as a weak approach to the generation of social scientific knowledge; that tourism knowledge has been generally characterized by case studies, area-specific discussions, best practice examples, and one-off or one-time research. Consequently, tourism research is perceived as stale, tired, repetitive, and lifeless. The trouble with its theoretical state of the art is attributed to the fact that its researchers keep producing an enormous record of case studies in response to the staggering expansion and variation of the tourism industries. Reflections on its methodological state of the art suggest that tourism researchers turn to alternative or innovative strategies rather than continue to produce more and more case studies of limited scientific value. These perceptions of case studies as atheoretical, area-specific, one-time, and not following methodological procedures, which were historically well-entrenched in a number of social science disciplines, are extended to the relatively new multidisciplinary community of tourism research.

Nonetheless, case studies have long been a topic of interest in the methodological literature. In a critique on the sustained interest in this method, Jennifer Platt suggested that case study as a research strategy has grown out of the methodological traditions of both qualitative and quantitative inquiries such as the grounded theory and the logic of experimental designs. Robert Stake referred to its vantage as the study of the particular, which encompasses the nature, historical backgrounds, physical settings, as well as sociocultural contexts of a specific case. Jean Hartley succinctly noted that case studies allow for processual, contextual, and longitudinal [Page 122]analyses of various actions and meanings in organizational research. In a critical reflection of its use in social sciences research, Randy Stoecker stated that the case study approach has been wrongly maligned as it is the best way to refine general theories and apply effective interventions in complex situations.

In terms of research design, Harry Eckstein categorized the variations of this approach into Configurative-idiographic studies, disciplined-configurative studies, heuristic case studies, plausibility probes, and crucial-case studies. Robert Yin, on the other hand, used a refined typology of exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory case studies, to be developed in the maximization of construct validity, internal and external validity, and reliability. Each of these typologies is seen as an effective tool in contexts or situations that are often too complex for experimental or quasiexperimental designs. In addition, case study is differentiated from history or historiography in that the latter involves special ways of verifying documents and artifacts in dealing with noncontemporary events when techniques such as participant observations, direct measurements, or interviews cannot be used as corrobora-tory evidence.

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