Editorial

Lifestyle, referring to individuals’ patterns of living, includes numerous dimensions such as people’s interests, opinions, and activities (Vyncke, 2002). Over time, lifestyle has received increasing attention in the marketing domain for its functions in the prediction, explanation, and reflection of consumer behavior. Lifestyle is also a key factor in market segmentation and strategy development; it can provide rich information about customers compared to sociodemographic variables (Iversen et al., 2016). Within the tourism context, the role of lifestyle is more diversified. On one hand, lifestyle influences travelers’ destination-related attitudes, travel motivations, destination selection, tourism activities, and product/ service consumption. Travel choices also mirror lifestyle characteristics that can shape tourists’ behavior. On the other hand, lifestyle can be considered a “tourism product,” as the typical mode of living (e.g., a slow-paced life) in different destinations may become an intangible attraction that draws visitors. While the vastness of lifestyle as a construct has inspired unique ideas for tourism research, related studies have not yet entered the tourism mainstream; many avenues remain underexplored. Accordingly, this special issue seeks to cast light on lifestyle’s place in tourism within diverse social and cultural contexts. The chosen research endeavors clarify a variety of intriguing tourism phenomena and provide fresh insight for scholars and practitioners. This special issue presents nine empirical papers authored by 27 researchers from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, New Zealand, the US, the UK, and Portugal. The articles cover topics such as lifestyle entrepreneurship, lifestyle mobility, luxury experiences, and tourism well-being. This issue includes a balanced methodological set of qualitative and quantitative analyses. Unlike most research focusing on Western contexts, several of these studies involve Asian regions (particularly China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan) and thus capture the growing popularity of Asian perspectives. Selected paper highlights are summarized below. Using ethnography approach, Zhang, Tucker, and Albrecht (2018) examined lifestyle entrepreneurial migrants’ preferred living patterns. The authors discovered that these migrants’ lifestyle is characterized by anticommercialization and anti-modernity, which is a reflexive project of the self. Similarly, Sun and Xu (2019) investigated how lifestyle tourism entrepreneurs shift during daily life between enterprisers and tourists at a microlevel through in-depth interviews; results revealed several challenges that these entrepreneurs face in tourism destinations. Both studies were performed within Chinese ancient towns and focused on elements of lifestyle entrepreneurs’ actual lives. Although a large body of knowledge has considered the antecedents of lifestyle entrepreneurship, the content and consequences of this topic have begun to attract new attention. The next two papers refer to luxury consumption, first broadly and then in a more specific setting. Through focus group discussions, Hung, Qiu, Guillet, and Wang (2018) explored Chinese residents’ motivations for luxury consumption along with their perceptions of Hong Kong as a luxury shopping destination. The authors concluded that Chinese luxury consumption is personally and socially oriented, and social movements may influence the appeal of a luxury destination. Peng, Chen, and Hung (2019) used a questionnaire to investigate tourist consumption in Taiwan luxury restaurants. They found that perceived value influenced patrons’ satisfaction and in turn informed visitors’ attitudes toward the destination and their behavioral intentions around luxury restaurants. Lifestyle mobility is also examined in this thematic collection. Grounded in the notion of “therapeutic mobilities,” Zhao, Chen, and Xu (2019) investigated the relationship between the annual Spring Festival homecoming and wellbeing among Chinese college students. After interviews, the authors determined that students may experience mental and physical contradictions rather than solely positive well-being upon returning home. Yang, Wang, Sun, and Li (2019) conducted a questionnaire survey to understand travelers’ perceived quality of a walking system in a pedestrian-only destination. According to a proposed ordered probit model, they noted that destination crowding and cleanliness could each be improved. Moreover, Yu and Li (2018) examined the effects of temporal landmarks on individuals’ travel motivations and intentions via three experimental studies. Findings indicated that public and personal temporal landmarks facilitated individuals’ motivations while internal goal conflicts could weaken the effects of these landmarks. This study sheds light on tourists’ travel motivations and decision making. JOURNAL OF TRAVEL & TOURISM MARKETING 2020, VOL. 37, NO. 5, 533–534 https://doi.org/10.1080/10548408.2020.1793072