Turning It Off: Emotions in Digital-Free Travel

TLDR

This article aims to theorize digitally disconnected travel experiences by investigating emotional responses during withdrawal and regain of technological affordances and develops the Disconnected Emotions Model (DEM) to explain the changing relationship between human emotions and material affordances. The study adopts affordance and emotional episode concepts to build a conceptual framework, collects fifteen diaries and eighteen interviews from 24 participants reflecting on their disconnected experiences, and develops the Disconnected Emotions Model (DEM) to explain the changing relationship between human emotions and material affordances. The study provides a contextual update of emotional episodes by detailing various emotions throughout the disconnecting/reconnecting travel experience and contributes to the affordance literature by exploring the fluidity of technology and environmental affordances.

Abstract

This article aims to theorize digitally disconnected travel experiences by investigating various emotional responses during the process of withdrawal and regain of technological affordances. The theoretical concepts of affordance and emotional episodes were adopted in this study to create a conceptual framework. Fifteen diaries and 18 interviews were collected from 24 participants’ reflections of their disconnected experiences. This study thus contributes a contextual update of emotional episodes by providing a detailed account of various emotions in the entire disconnecting/reconnecting travel experience. Also, this study contributes to the affordance literature by exploring the fluidity of technology affordances and environmental affordances. This article develops the Disconnected Emotions Model (DEM), a theoretical framework to provide an understanding of the changing relationship between human emotions and material affordances.