ABSTRACT
Taking a civic approach to understanding host communities, this chapter examines tourist and host interactions on the Appalachian Trail (AT) – a large hiking track in the eastern United States. The AT is well known for ‘trail magic’ – that is, acts of kindness, gifts and other tangible and intangible forms of encouragement given to thru-hikers, sometimes anonymously and often unexpectedly, either from strangers who live along a section of the trail or from former thru-hikers who return to the trail to reciprocate the kindness they once received. This chapter seeks to understand (1) the motives of ‘trail angels’, the people who gift acts of kindness to thru-hikers and (2) the responses of thru-hikers to the receipt of trail magic. What drives donors of kindness to give in tourism contexts? And how do recipients of such kindness respond? In exploring these questions, the chapter answers Glover and Filep’s (2015) call for a more concerted social science research agenda on the kindness of strangers and gratitude in tourism contexts. The chapter also aims to add to the contemporary positive psychology works on kindness (Otake, Shimai, Tanaka-Matsumi & Fredrickson, 2006) and gratitude (Emmons & Crumpler, 2000) by introducing the new tourism context and advances some key discussions in the tourism literature. Specifi cally, it extends works on tourists’ attitudes toward the people they visit (Bowen & Clarke, 2009; Murphy & Murphy, 2004; Pearce, 2011) by focusing on gratitude and the generosity of strangers. It also aims to enhance understandings of contemporary tourist motivations (Pearce, 2011; Pearce & Lee, 2005) by further explaining the role and the value of the need for social interactions (Larsen, Urry & Axhausen, 2007).
