Identity theory and its relation to archipelago tourism: Literature review

HandyPratama
(Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia, handy.pratama-12@psikologi.unair.ac.id)

Abstract

Identity is how individuals describe him/herself and has been inversigated in social sciences such as
psychology and sociology. In recent development, identity theory has been applied to explain
phenomena in economy field such as consumer behavior to individual’s performance in doing his
work. With recent development, the author observes the application of identity theory to explain
archipelago tourism as a theoretical construct to create strong brand in the mind of consumer. This
paper aims to explain the concept of identity, recent development and research, and the relation
with archipelago tourism. This paper is organized using literature review method. The steps that the
author do is as follow: (1) collect scientific literature related to identity theory and archipelago
tourism, (2) compare, analyze, and synthesize literature on identity theory and archipelago tourism,
(3) conclude the result of investigation. The result of this reseach shows that archipelago tourism
can best be explained by one notion in identity theory called multiple identity (i.e, a notion that we
have more than one identity). Archipelago tourism offers tourists to experiences cultures and local
customs that differ from an island to another. This diversity of tourism experiences can also be seen
as an identity itself. As an identity, archipelago tourism is best applied in a country that has an
archipelago geography and diverse culture. This paper contributes to the understanding archipelago
tourism as construction of identity which is in this case a multiple identity. Other implications and
suggestions are discussed.

Keywords: identity, identity economics, multiple identity, archipelago tourism

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background
As one of many kinds of human activity, tourism fulfills human’s need to release tension and
having recreational experience. This assumptions guide every tourism’s professional to design
various tourism experience that could satisfy visitor’s needs. As a recreational activity, tourism
offers lots of options to choose. Wether someone decides to go to beach, mountain, or even join
historical tourism program might be influenced by a lots of factors.
This paper aims to examine archipelago tourism concept and it’s possible application. This
paper also aims to examine the relations between identity theory which is usually found in social
science literature (the author mainly discuss psychology literature) with archipelago tourism
concept. To achieve these aims, the author specifically illustrate several aspects of identity theory to
explain individual preferences for tourism destination and also discussing possible effects of
archipelago tourism to visitor.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Archipelago Tourism

World Tourism Organization (2011) state that tourism has fluctuative growth since 1950 to
2009. They further argue that these growth has been punctuated by growth and declined caused by
man-made or natural crises. Tourism itself, is a large economic sector that brings visitor to almost
all countries in the world.

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 In terms of economic activity, World Tourism Organization (2011) illustrates that visitors are
purchasing emotionally when they travel to maximize tourism experience. Thus, in this kind of
thinking, visitor’s preference of tourism destination is largely influenced by underlying
psychological factor.
The term tourism itself my contains lots of meanings. One way to define it might be an
intentional effort to experience recreational activity. By that definitions, any kind of recrational
activity might be considered tourism. Thus, in that view, going to a mountain, beach, or even
shopping mall could be considered tourism.
One can design different recreational experience based on several factor. For example, someone
can design tourism program that includes visiting natural scenery such as beach, mountain, or even
underwater. Someone could also design recreational experience that only consist of man-made
cultural events that ranged from dance performance, visiting historical place, etc.
Baldacchino and Ferreira (2013) made an interesting point about a new way of “doing” tourism.
They identify a common problem in tourism industries in various small island states and teritories
that is the organization of such diverse experience into one archipelagic tourism. They offered
archipelago tourism as a new way of solving such problems. Archipelago tourism itself is not yet
recognized in policy nor academic field (Bethel, 2002, p.240 cited from Baldacchino& Ferreira,
2013).
In their analysis, Baldacchino and Ferreira (2013) recognize that the plurality associated with
archipelago tourism might raises specific challange. They pointed out that the plurality might not fit
into one big identity or history of island groups. Thus, it is difficult to manage and coordinate
different island tourism potential into one archipelago tourism. These challange would be discussed
further in the next section.

2.2 Identity Theory

The author argues that one of major factor that influence someone to choose tourism
destionation is identity. generally speaking, identity could be defined as a description that someone
made about him/herself. Identity could refer to banal and obvious thing such as biographical
information (i.e., name, gender, occupation, etc.). but, identity could also refer to personal things
such as moral values, traits, or personality characteristic. Then, these factors would influence
someone to decide which tourism destination he/she wants to go.
One example to illustrate this point would be the act of choosing man-made tourism destination
such as Disney Land or naturaly formed tourism destination such as mountain, beach, or hills.
Individual’s preference over those choices would largely be influenced by their personality
characteristic. Someone who defines him/herself as introvert person might not prefer crowded place
such as Disney Land but perhaps find it meaningful to visit museum or other historical places.
Those possible relation between personality and choice of destinations is not yet confirmed by
empirical research becuase such attempts have not been made.
Even if there are no empirical relation that confirm these possible relation, Akerlof and Kranton
(2000) develop economic model that include identity as defining factor for someone to make an
economic decision. Individual engages in an economic action to purchase goods and services based
on their identity (i.e., their sense of self). In Akerlof and Kranton (2000) model’s, identity is viewed
as social category that dictates people’s behavior and thus lead them to economically behave in a
consistent manner with their choosen identity. Oyserman et al. (2012) recognize the same pattern
and argue that choices that people made must be congruent with their identity.

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2.3 Identity Development
In social science literature, especially psychology, scholars have recognized identity as crucial
element in understanding human’s mind and behavior. Scholars use various terms to refer to the
same phemonena. Sometimes, people use the term self, ego, or identity to refer to the sameness and
continuity (Erikson, 1951) over time. This sameness and continuity is an abstract terms that in an
operational lavel manifest in how individuals describe themselves over time.
Descriptions individuals made about themselves can be manifested in lots of different ways.
These descriptions can be manifested in personality characteristics such as introversion,
extroversion, etc., or it can be manifested as belongingness with other people such as son of, father
of, etc. In these examples, the author identified the most essential part of identity that is the ability
to distinguish oneself from other. This distinguishing feature is the basic foundation of the notion of
individual differences that is no human being are similar.
But, this distinctiveness from other human being is not necessarily certain. Identity could also
refer to social category that requires someone to belong to certain social group to have an identity.
These identity is usually called social identity and can be salient when intergroup competition are
present (Cikara, Botvinick, & Fiske, 2011).
The understanding of identity as social category is only part of bigger puzzle and does not
explain completely on how the process and dynamics of those social categories are constructed. At
an individual level, individuals develop a sense of self in the broader social context. An
understanding of this micro level explanation of human’s identity would contribute to fundamental
knowledge of how underlying process of identity development influence the construction of social
categories.
Erikson (1951) was the pioneer scholar to study identity in terms of life-span developmental
perspective (i.e., a framework of personality development that begin as early as inborn child to late
adulthood or old age). Erikson (1951) stated that the process of identity formation begin as
individuals enter adolescent period. At that age period, individuals are facing a crisis that need to be
resolved, namely identity crisis. This crisis intrigued individuals to define oneself to find sameness
and continuity. Resolution in this periods lead individuals an assured sense of self by which
individuals adhere to ideological values and vocational preference.
Erikson’s conceptualization of identity formation was further developed by Marcia (1966).
Marcia argues that individual acquires identity by engaging in two process that is exploration and
committment. Exploration refers to active searching, sorting outs, weighting alternatives, and trying
out various roles and life plans (Kroger & Marcia, 2011). Commitment refers to individual’s
investment of certain roles or life plan manifested in a certain course of action (Kroger & Marcia,
2011). Not only identifying it’s main processes, Marcia (1966) also distinguish four status in which
individuals resolve identity issues. But, for the sake of simplicity, those four status were not
discussed here.
Marcia’s (1966) model were the first model to empirically confirm Erikson’s conception of
identity development. Beside Marcia (1966), other scholars have tried to conceptualize identity
formation in a different fashion. Côté (1997) argue that successful identity development are
characterized by adult identity attaintment and securing a membership in adult community.
Berzonsky (1989) reconceptualize Marcia’s (1966) identity status paradigm into three style or
orientation in resolving identity issues. Another author (Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, Beyers, &
Vansteenkiste, 2005) had tried to extend Marcia’s (1966) framework of exploration and
committment into several dimensions and refer them as process.
Even though there are many alternatives to explain how individuals develop a coherent sense of
self, Marcia’s (1966) framework remain relevant and still be used in lots of empirical research. One
major implications of Marcia’s (1966) work was the exploration and committment as a process that
individual go through to develop a sense of identity. These two process could be implemented in
several field, especially education to help young people develop positive identity.

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 In business field, these two process could help advertiser design appropriate advertisement that
is relevant to its target audience and lead them to identify themselves with what is advertise. This is
often used in tobacco’s advertisement where the usual message in those advertisement were the
characteristic of cool, adventurous young people.

3 DISCUSSION
Based on those literature review, the author points out several assertions that I would be
explained in this section.
In line with Akerlof and Kranton (2000), the author views identity as a guiding principle in
deciding tourism destination to go. Therefore, any marketing’s programs need to be calibrated to
appropriate target audience. One has to ask first what kind of visitor that would likely to purchase
tourism program before designing marketing promotion strategies. Also, much more important than
that is the design of the tourism program itself should be designed to fulfill visitor needs as they
identify the tourism program with their own identity.
In terms of archipelago tourism, the diversity of experience, or the plurality associated with this
tourism program is congruent with one of identity concept namely multiple identity. The idea of
multiple identity is that someone could have more than one identity as it differs according to
different social context. For example, when interacting with his family, someone plays a role as a
husband (to his wife) and a father (to his children). In different setting, someone could play a role as
a supervisor, an intelligent scholar, or a religious muslims and it depends the social settings.
This multiple identity of oneself would resonate with archipelago tourism in which the plurality
or diversity of tourism experience would be identified with different “identity”. In island A,
someone could have meaningful experiences as he/she plays a role as a dancer in a traditional
dancing event. In island B, the same person could also find watching historical places resonate with
his/her identity as an intelligent scholar.
Indonesia as a specific tourism destination has long history of diversity. In fact, the plurality
that characterize archipelago tourism is not new for Indonesia. Indonesia has Pancasila as an
ideology with it’s fundamental principle that is bhinneka tunggal ika or unity in diversity. The
experiences of “Bhinneka” could be designed in an elaborated archipelago tourism program.
In terms of identity, there are no single cultural identity (i.e., dominant culture) that could best
represent Indonesia because of the abundance of diversities that Indonesia has. Therefore,
archipelago tourism might be relevant and could be designed with the experiences of “Bhinneka” to
best promote Indonesia as tourism destination.
These archipelago tourism could also gives several positive benefits for loval residents and
domestic and international visitors. Not only it could increase economic value for local residents, it
could also give social benefits to the visitors. Domestic visitors or international visitors, especially
those in their adolescent time to young adult could experience the exploration of various identities
that is reflected in the diverse culture and local customs in each islands. For the domestic visitors,
archipelago tourism program could widen their’s worldview by experiencing “Bhinneka”, that
would become the foundation of their ideology as a nation.

4 CONCLUSION
Identity theory is a relavant concept that could explain the motifs behind people’s choice of
tourism destination. Understanding this process could potentially be beneficial for policy makers
and professionals working in tourism.

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 Archipelago tourism as a new and specific tourism program could also be explained in terms of
identity theory. The diversity and plurality of experience could resonate with different identity that
people’s has. Furthermore, these diversities are congruent with Indonesia ideology, that is
“Bhinneka Tunggal Ika”. Designing archipelago tourism program that is grounded in “Bhinneka”
experiencs is recommended.

5 REFERENCES
Akerlof, G. A., & Kranton, R. E. (2000). Economics and Identity. The Quarterly Journal of
Economics, CXV(3), 715–753.
Baldacchino, G., & Ferreira, E. C. D. (2013). Competing notions of diversity in archipelago
tourism: Transport logistics, official rhetoric and inter-island rivalry in the Azores. Island Studies
Journal, 8(1), 84–104.
Berzonsky, M. D. (1989). Identity style: Conceptualization and measurement. Journal of Adolescent
Research, 4(3), 268–282.
Cikara, M., Botvinick, M. M., & Fiske, S. T. (2011). Us versus them: Social identity shapes neural
responses to intergroup competition and harm. Psychological Science, 1–8.
http://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610397667
Côté, J. E. (1997). An empirical test of the identity capital model. Journal of Adolescence, 20(5),
577–597. http://doi.org/10.1006/jado.1997.0111
Erikson, E. H. (1951). Childhood And Society. Frogmore, St. Albans: Triad Paladin.
Kroger, J., & Marcia, J. E. (2011). The Identity Statuses: Origins, Meanings, and Interpretations. In
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(pp. 31–53). New York, NY: Springer New York. Retrieved from
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Luyckx, K., Goossens, L., Soenens, B., Beyers, W., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2005). Identity status
based on 4 rather than 2 identity dimensions: Extending and refining marcia’s paradigm. Journal of
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Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 3(5), 551–558. http://doi.org/10.1037/h0023281
Oyserman, D., Elmore, K., & Smith, G. (2012). Self, Self-Concept, and Identity. In M. R. Leary &
J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of Self and Identity (pp. 69–104). New York: The Guilford Press.
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