Chapter 4 Research Participants’ Characteristics and VFR Tourism Behaviour
4.3 Involvement in VFR Tourism of International PhD Students
4.3.3 Factors that inhibit participation in VFR tourism
In many cases, such as for respondents R309 and R60 (quoted below), it was a combination of the reasons listed in Table 4.7 that appeared to have dissuaded the respondents from being involved in VFR tourism.
“I have no friends/relatives farther than 15km away in NZ and my family and friends outside of NZ are mostly in the US. We have not been here long enough to expect foreign visitors given the amount of money and planning involved in such a trip. We have several local friends whom we spend time with.” (R309)
“I have only been here shortly, so no one has come to visit yet (nor have I gone to visit them). But there are definitely plans for friends and family to visit me in the future.” (R60)
The respondents’ comments reconfirmed the potential connection between shorter length of stay in the country and the limited participation in VFR tourism. Their comments emphasised the distance between New Zealand and their home country, and the cost and effort required to plan VFR trips. Respondent R60 indicated the intention of having friend and family visits in the future, which implies VFR tourism potential as the students stay for a longer time in the host country. Further discussion on the factors that can inhibit students’ participation in VFR tourism is presented in the following section.
Zealand during the same time of the year. According to Maps of World (n.d.), New Zealand's latitude and longitude is 41° 00' South and 174 ° 00' East, which results in different weather in different places at the same time. For example, Alex thought she might not visit her friends in Dunedin again because it was too cold there.
The weather. For example, I am living in Auckland, I went to Dunedin to visit my friends once and then I thought, I am not gonna go back because it is so cold. (Alex)
Perceived bad weather is often associated with being wet, rainy and cold. These may affect travel conditions, and limit options for activities when visiting friends and relatives. As a result, the students were discouraged from travelling to visit friends and relatives who were living in places with ‘bad’ weather. Conversely, if friends and relatives resided in places that had nicer weather, VFR travel became a more attractive activity, as shared by Tammy:
I usually go [to visit my family] in June-July to avoid winter.
Second, the effort required in planning a VFR trip was another factor that discouraged the students from engaging in VFR. When it was known that their friends or relatives might be busy, there was both a complication, and possibly, a reluctance to go due to the difficulty of coordinating or synchronising several people’s schedules. A concern over potentially interrupting their friends’ and relatives’ everyday life was also expressed.
I think it is planning ahead, and it is not just me who has to plan but my friends as well. It can be quite time consuming and takes a bit of effort from everyone. Like some friends up in Auckland, we are having this concert coming in July so we have this group Facebook chat that goes in and out. They are like: “are you coming?”; “are we staying together?”;
“should we book this place”, you see. So it is not just about me that I need to make up my mind and go. (Alex)
Planning VFR trips requires time and effort, which links to the time and cost constraints that students generally experience as part of studying internationally. The nature of VFR tourism is that it involves multiple participants whose schedules and time availability are likely to be different and, therefore, planning VFR trips would be inevitably challenging. As was also found from responses to the online survey, the time-consuming nature of organising VFR trips and the associated high cost might discourage people from travelling to visit their friends and relatives.
The study workload was another factor that added to the time pressure for international PhD students. ‘Long distance’ and ‘my workload’ were commonly mentioned among the focus group participants.
Study pressure. In fact, here, I have to do everything on my own so I always find everyday life pressure challenging, and it consumes my whole 24 hours completely so I really don’t get much time to visit my friends.
Even weekends are also full of housework, cooking. So being a single parent here, I have a very hectic daily life. That is the main reason why I haven’t visited my friends who are living here. Another reason is transport, because I don’t have a car so I have to catch a bus. (Tania)
For the international PhD students in this research, time constraint was often associated with study workload. In particular, those who were here with family noted that they had limited free time to travel to visit friends because of family responsibilities. Their available time might also be dependent on school holidays and whether these holidays were aligned with university breaks or not. Conversely, students who were not here with family potentially had fewer obligations and responsibilities and, consequently, more available time. However, having immediate family in New Zealand could also mean a higher need for social relationship enrichment. As a result, students in this position might have felt more motivated to engage in VFR tourism. The effect of the presence of immediate family during the study experience is, therefore, likely to have had a range of effects on the propensity to engage in VFR travel. This finding also suggests family status as a potential influencing factor for VFR tourism.
With limited available time, travel distance became an important consideration. If a trip to visit friends and relatives involved long-haul travel, it was reasonable to assume that the required long travelling time was discouraging. Although long-haul travel is universally accepted as international, it can be a subjective and relative opinion. Some students might have considered a domestic trip within New Zealand as long-haul travel, especially when their time availability was limited. It is possible, for example, to spend as long travelling (e.g., by cars) within New Zealand as it does to fly internationally on a long-haul flight. It should also be noted, however, that whilst the PhD study workload may contribute to the time constraint pressure, PhD students
have more flexibility in terms of when to spend their free time, as their courses are usually not bound to fixed classes or strict deadlines.5
The issue of cost was often associated with travel expenses such as flights and accommodation:
In New Zealand, finding accommodation is very difficult. I want to travel to visit my friends if they have a suitable place for us to stay with them, but I am sure many people don’t have enough space. So, I may consider travelling to visit them and stay with them, but if I need to find a place, for example, backpackers or hotel, to visit my friends, I may not go. (Mary) In my home country, I have a really big house to live with my child and husband, but here I have to share with others because here housing is so expensive so I can’t afford and I have to share with others. (Tania)
The ability to stay with friends and relatives is an important pull factor that can influence the students’ decision to engage in VFR tourism or not, because it helps them to save on accommodation costs. In New Zealand, where accommodation is often perceived of as expensive and hard to find (Johnson, Howden-Chapman, &
Eaqub, 2018), it may be particularly critical. Flight cost may also affect the time of travel. Some respondents shared that, on occasion, the decision to undertake a VFR trip depended on whether flight tickets were on special or not. This suggests that being cost conscious is a broad travel determinant for international PhD students, and that it therefore also applies to their VFR travels.
In general, many of the inhibiting factors to VFR tourism explored through the focus groups were similar to the reasons given by the online survey respondents for not engaging in VFR tourism. This reinforces the importance of these factors to the VFR tourism behaviour of international PhD students. The remainder of this chapter focuses on describing the VFR tourism behaviour of international PhD students in New Zealand. The findings presented in the following sections were based on the relevant subset of the main data (307 respondents who had engaged in VFR tourism since their arrival in New Zealand).
5 Applicable to research-only PhD degrees without any course requirements, which is the usual form of a PhD in New Zealand.