Following a wonderful overseas experience: What happens when Thai youths return home?

Abstract

© 2019 Reverse culture shock (RCS) has been claimed to negatively affect overseas sojourners during their return. In an attempt to better comprehend RCS on Thai youth tourists, this study aims to explore their perceptual and emotional stages, the coping strategies that occur after their return and the degree to which their RCS can be explained within previous western-originated frameworks. Pre-interview activities and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 participants. Results reveal a commonality and uniqueness of perceptions and emotions across three groups of overseas programme participants. Moreover, most Thai youth tourists are found to adopt a resocialised (optimistic-passive) coping strategy, and a majority of them report an emerging left-shifting curve, which differs from RCS western frameworks. Apart from theoretical contributions, the findings also yield crucial managerial implications for two key institutions (school and family) on ways to lessen the effects of RCS on Thai youth.