What is it about?
When people choose where to travel, does the cultural mix of a destination pull them in or push them away? Earlier studies found both, with no clear reason why. We tested two ideas from psychology. One says people visit diverse places to explore and grow. The other says cultural differences can raise concerns about safety and hold people back. Using tourist flows between 196 home countries and 150 destinations over 27 years, we found that, on average, more culturally diverse destinations received slightly fewer visitors. But that average hides two opposite groups. Younger populations were drawn to diverse places, while older populations tended to avoid them. The pull toward diversity among the young was stronger when travelers came from more restrained, less indulgent home cultures.
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Why is it important?
For years, the evidence on whether cultural diversity helps or hurts tourism was contradictory, which left destinations without clear guidance. Our study offers one simple framework that explains both patterns at once: the same diversity that attracts younger, exploration-minded travelers can deter older ones who prefer the familiar. This matters in practice. Culturally diverse and developing destinations are often at a disadvantage, and knowing which visitors they naturally appeal to can help them focus their marketing and welcome the right audiences. More broadly, travel builds contact between groups and nations, so understanding what draws people to diverse places speaks to cultural exchange, tolerance, and fairer access to the benefits of tourism.
Perspectives
What drew me to this project was the chance to bring economics and psychology together on a question that neither field could answer alone. As an economist, I work with large tourism-flow datasets and gravity models, but the numbers by themselves could not explain why cultural diversity sometimes attracts visitors and sometimes puts them off. Working with psychologists, we let two human motives, curiosity and caution, speak to the data. For me the most striking result is how much age matters: younger and older populations respond to the same destinations in opposite ways. It is a reminder that behind every tourist statistic are people with very different reasons for their choices.
Dr. Usman Khalid
United Arab Emirates University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Do culturally diverse destinations attract or deter tourism? Probing competing psychologies in global travel records, Current Issues in Tourism, June 2026, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2026.2683136.
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