A New Philosophical Frame for Leisure and Tourism Behaviors: Behaviorism in the Context of Relativism

Abstract

Behaviorism is considered objectivism on the positivistic side. This philosophy is conceived as opposite to mentalism and subjectivism. Mentalism criticizes the behaviorist approach to verbal and cultural behaviors and argues that human behaviors, particularly symbolic behaviors are hardly explained by behaviorism in objectivism. This paper suggests relativism as a new philosophical frame to explain complex behaviors such as leisure and tourism behaviors in behaviorism. Relativism is a post-postmodernist approach to encompass both objectivism and subjectivism and engages in the holistic process of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. In this paper, behavioral studies are reconstructed in the hierarchical structure of simple, variable, and symbolic relativism, which accounts for leisure and tourism behaviors.