Limenscape: Operationalizing the Liminoid and the Liminal in Tourism

Evolution of Concepts

The concepts of liminal and liminoid have become central frameworks within tourism studies, illuminating how tourist experiences manifest as transitional or threshold states. Originally rooted in anthropology – Van Gennep’s (1909) stages of rites of passage and Turner’s (1974b, 1979) classic distinction between collective, structured “liminal” and individualized, playful “liminoid” – these ideas have been widely adapted. Tourism scholars such as Graburn (1977, 1983), E. Cohen (1979, 1988), MacCannell (1992), Urry (1990), and Dann and Cohen (1991) employed these constructs to examine inversion, authenticity, and the disruption of everyday norms. Crucially, later advances – particularly Spiegel (2011) – reconceptualized liminal and liminoid as ideal-type poles on a continuum, rather than discrete categories, echoing Graburn’s (1983, p. 21) early insight and clarifying that limited attribute “blending” is theoretically permissible. This continuum perspective forms the basis of the present study’s approach.

Diversification and Application in Tourism Contexts

Since the early 2000s, the theoretical landscape has broadened considerably. Edensor (2001) analyzed tourism’s inherently liminal practices, while Andrews and Roberts (2012) extended liminality to settings such as ruins and beaches. The framework has been applied to holiday interactions (McCabe & Stokoe, 2004), gendered tourism (Aitchison, 2005, 2012), backpacker subcultures (O’Regan, 2015), and queer tourism (Waitt & Markwell, 2020), illustrating its adaptability. Wu et al. (2020) demonstrated the cultural specificity of liminal rites at Chinese music festivals, while Milazzo (2023) analyzed how agency, play, and value formation in commercial media tourism spaces can both enable and constrain transformative experiences. Empirical and conceptual advances have highlighted the complexity and contextual variability of threshold experiences. Brooker and Joppe (2014) developed a typology for tourism innovation based on liminality; D. Wang and Shen (2024), Feng et al. (2025), and Luo et al. (2024) made methodological advances but remain limited in generalizability. Magrizos et al. (2021) used mixed methods to study volunteer tourism but ultimately reduced liminality to a single dimension (“immersiveness”), thus overlooking the multidimensional, continuum-based character of threshold states. Contemporary research challenges simple dichotomies of ordinary/extraordinary or structure/anti-structure. Skandalis et al. (2024) revealed, via urban music-festival ethnography, that extraordinary experiences can emerge from creative engagement with everyday structures. Goolaup and Nunkoo (2023) introduced the idea of “synstructure,” defined as the coexistence of rule-bound order and anti-structural play within the same experiential frame. Mamédio et al. (2025) highlighted paradoxes of authenticity in liminal consumption, demonstrating that modern threshold experiences are often hybrid and ambiguous. Collinson and Baxter (2022) critiqued the managerial construction of liminoid heritage experiences as neither universal nor consistently transformative. While much of the empirical literature emphasizes positive or transformative outcomes, a growing body of work now challenges this bias. Holmqvist and Ponsignon (2025) documented confusion and frustration in poorly scaffolded liminal spaces, whereas Tomazos and Murdy (2024) identified “perpetual liminality,” a condition in which participants remain indefinitely suspended between pre-trip and post-trip identities, thereby negating closure and transformation. Studies such as Zhai et al. (2024) continue to foreground therapeutic benefits, situating liminal episodes within everyday urban events. Recognizing both poles underscores that the same mechanism can produce growth or distress depending on duration, agency, and social support. Digital mediation adds further complexity. Conti and Heldt Cassel (2020) showed how Instagram creates digitally mediated liminality, simultaneously enabling self-expression and producing commercial pressures. Thus, the embodied tensions documented above are re-encoded in online spaces that monetize visibility. Recognizing both poles underscores that the same mechanism can produce growth or distress depending on duration, agency, and social support. Recent evidence adds that individual dispositions also matter: Lengyel (2022) shows that higher trait mindfulness heightens sensitivity to threshold cues, thereby expanding the scope for liminoid engagement.

This diversification has prompted meta-theoretical reflection: Milazzo and Soulard (2024) contrasted Turner’s anthropology with Mezirow’s transformative learning, arguing that both neglect power relations and the potential for failed transformation, thereby calling for post-foundational, interdisciplinary approaches.

Cultural Variability and Context Sensitivity

Although liminal and liminoid experiences are often theorized as universal, growing evidence points to significant cross-cultural variation (Horvath et al., 2022; Thomassen, 2015). Cultural background shapes how individuals navigate novelty, familiarity, freedom, constraint, individualism, and collectivism in tourism (Reisinger & Mavondo, 2006). For example, Luo et al. (2024) showed how liminality mediates between cultural or spatial features and social cohesion in Chinese tourism, while Feng et al. (2025) documented gendered scripts in women’s “girlfriend getaways.” Despite these advances, much research remains context-bound, underscoring the need for multidimensional and culturally sensitive measurement.

Personality Change, Status Transformation, and Role Play

Tourism scholarship sometimes conflates short-lived behavioral shifts with Turner’s (1969) idea of liminal transformation. Yet Turner reserved transformation for status changes that receive collective recognition, structured reintegration, and enduring effect – conditions seldom met in leisure travel. Most tourist role play, therefore, is better framed as liminoid experimentation: reversible, individually chosen, and socially unratified. As Graburn (1983, p. 21) notes, tourists typically return to “unchanged social positions despite internal feelings of transformation,” echoing Lett’s (1983) notion of “temporary behavioral inversions.” Empirical findings corroborate this view: Kahana (2024) describes vacation behavior as “temporary experiments,” while Baltaci and Cakici (2022a) observe deliberate “vacation personas” discarded post-trip. When travelers consciously preserve their core identity across settings, they replicate the stabilizing logic of liminal rites, affirming social norms through controlled disruption rather than contradicting them (Graburn, 1983; Turner, 1974b, 1979).

Operationalization, Measurement, and Research Gap

Despite extensive theorization, empirical operationalization of liminal–liminoid experiences remains challenging. Zhang and Xu (2019) proposed a four-dimensional model but struggled to separate liminal from liminoid elements, sometimes conflating structured “communitas” with spontaneous romance. Such conflation weakens a continuum approach unless explicitly theorized. Lim et al. (2010) introduced “liminal nones” but did not develop quantitative measures. S. Lee et al. (2015) produced a liminality scale for spectator sports but isolated “communitas” and focused chiefly on liminal phenomena. Recent studies (Collinson & Baxter, 2022; Feng et al., 2025; Luo et al., 2024; D. Wang & Shen, 2024) adopt multidimensional metrics but still prioritize liminal over liminoid dimensions. For instance, D. Wang and Shen (2024) measure joy, harmony, and happiness – affects that Turner (1974a) associated more with liminoid play. Accordingly, precise empirical discrimination between liminal and liminoid remains elusive. Standard factor-analytic techniques struggle to enforce theoretical polarity constraints; we therefore apply a cross-entropy optimization algorithm that iteratively maximizes information fit while anchoring item loadings at predetermined continuum endpoints.

Limitations and Gaps in the Current Literature

Many studies remain qualitative, single-site, or context-specific, and most measurement tools fall short of providing the multidimensional, continuum-based assessment demanded by theory (Feng et al., 2025; S. Lee et al., 2015; Lim et al., 2010; Luo et al., 2024; D. Wang & Shen, 2024; Zhang & Xu, 2019). Conceptual innovation is sometimes muted, with new scales replicating prior models rather than advancing theory (Feng et al., 2025; Magrizos et al., 2021). Critics further caution against over-generalization, the commercialization of threshold rhetoric, and the marketing of supposedly liminal experiences – particularly in online settings (S. A. Cohen & Cohen, 2019; Meethan, 2012; Picard & Robinson, 2016). To close these gaps, the next section introduces the Limen Experiences in Tourism model, a five-dimension, paired-percentage framework that renders liminal–liminoid continua empirically tractable across diverse tourism settings. We outline its theoretical underpinnings and show how this continuum lens captures the nuanced interplay of threshold states in contemporary travel.

Theoretical Foundation and Developments

The Limen Experiences in Tourism model is motivated by the growing consensus that liminal and liminoid phenomena occupy points along a continuum rather than occupying mutually exclusive categories (Graburn, 1983; Spiegel, 2011; Thomassen, 2014). Thomassen (2014) notes that “degrees of liminality” vary with the extent to which an experience departs from persisting structures. Agency, then, governs how far a traveler moves along the continuum, whereas the possibility that liminal and liminoid traits may co-exist is inherent to the continuum itself. Earlier scholarship acknowledged tourist “inversions” along conceptual continua (Graburn, 1983) but did not operationalize them empirically. Spiegel (2011) refined this view by casting liminal and liminoid as ideal-type end poles that may appear simultaneously within a single episode. Our model builds on this foundation by extending previous work in three key areas:

The relationships among these theoretical elements are summarized schematically in Figure 1.

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Figure 1.

Limen experiences in tourism model showing intrinsic and extrinsic limen potentials, liminal-liminoid continua, and illustrative experiential effects across the trip timeline.

The Limenscape Construct

Drawing on Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial triad, the Limenscape serves as a conceptual map that plots where travelers situate themselves on each liminal–liminoid continuum across pre-trip, in-trip, and post-trip phases. It materializes through co-creation: personal dispositions meet destination affordances to actualize limen potential.

Core Premises

Illustrative Experiential Effects

The model tentatively links continuum positions to two broad clusters of outcomes. Liminoid-oriented effects (e.g., increased creativity, self-expression, autonomy, openness, and self-confidence) stem from exploratory, playful engagement. Liminal-oriented effects (e.g., heightened emotional stability, strengthened rituals, community cohesion, reinforced identity, and respect for tradition) arise when structured experiences reaffirm social bonds. Because our focus was scale validation, we did not test causal pathways; that task remains open. In conclusion, the Limen Experiences in Tourism model converts liminal-liminoid distinctions into a single, quantitative continuum -operationalized via a paired-percentage response format and cross-entropy-optimized item selection detailed in the next section – furnishing researchers with an empirical index that replaces binary categorizations. This metric both resolves long-standing conceptual ambiguity about “threshold” travel states and supplies a practical scaffold for testing the situational antecedents and behavioral, affective, and social consequences of limen experiences across diverse tourism settings.

Research Design Overview

To capture the balance of liminal and liminoid orientations in tourism experiences, we implemented a three-stage research design. This process combined domain-grounded item generation, dual-phase empirical testing, and psychometric validation. The full procedure unfolded over three procedural stages: initial conceptual mapping, pilot testing via a simplified ordinal-scale format, and final validation using an innovative paired-percentage scaling approach. Because the paired-percentage format imposes greater cognitive load on respondents, a six-point Likert-style version was first piloted (n = 996) to identify and remove semantically ambiguous or psychometrically weak items before subjecting respondents to the more cognitively demanding paired-percentage format. This approach prevented confounding item quality issues with format-related response difficulties. A subsequent validation study (n = 929) employed the paired-percentage version to generate precise, trade-off-based assessments of individual preferences. The two-phase progression enhanced construct clarity while mitigating measurement artifacts.

Multi-Source Sampling Strategy

Data collection employed a multi-source approach across four distinct samples, combining panel-based and campus-based recruitment to achieve both scale and demographic diversity (Table 1).

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Table 1.

Sample Characteristics.

Sample		Age		Domestic days	Foreign days
	N	M (Range)	% Female	Mdn	Mdn	Method
Panel samples
Pilot (Likert)	996	57.0 (18–87)	70.0	10.0	7.0	Jaguar Media panel
Validation (paired-percentage)	929	56.5 (18–91)	69.0	10.0	7.0	Jaguar Media panel
Campus
Hungarian	263	24.5 (18–68)	66.5	10.0	10.0	University
International	244	22.2 (17–74)	50.4	14.0	12.0	University

Note. M = mean; Travel days = median annual values calculated from tourist activities reported over the past 2 years; Mdn = median.

The two primary validation studies were conducted in October 2024 by Jaguar Media (jaguarmedia.hu), a Hungarian market research firm with a digital panel exceeding 2 million members. The panel samples were recruited using a targeted strategy that prioritized respondents with high cumulative vacation activity over the previous 2 years. This targeting strategy introduces potential selection bias toward highly active travelers, limiting generalizability to the broader population. This criterion, combined with explicit instructions to exclude business travel and family trips involving child supervision, resulted in samples skewing toward mature adults with greater leisure time availability (mean age approximately 57 in both panel samples). These respondents were well-educated, with the majority holding post-secondary qualifications: in the pilot sample, 41.5% held secondary education, 32.2% bachelor’s degrees, 21.1% master’s degrees, and 5.2% other qualifications. The validation sample showed similar educational attainment (43.0% secondary, 31.7% bachelor’s, 21.9% master’s degrees, and 3.4% other qualifications). The campus samples provided crucial younger cohorts for age-related comparisons, with mean ages of 24.5 and 22.2 respectively. As expected from university populations, the Hungarian campus sample showed 74.5% currently pursuing or having completed secondary education, with 15.6% holding bachelor’s and 6.5% master’s degrees. The international campus sample demonstrated higher educational progression, with only 36.1% at secondary level, 49.6% with bachelor’s degrees, and 13.1% with master’s degrees, reflecting the graduate student composition of international programs. All samples reported substantial travel experience relevant to the study’s tourism focus. The international campus sample reported the highest median foreign travel days (12.0 annually), surpassing the panel samples (7.0), while maintaining similar domestic travel patterns (14.0 days vs. 10.0 days). These travel patterns confirm that respondents across all samples had recent, meaningful tourism experiences to draw upon when completing the survey. The travel activity reported by our respondents (median 10 domestic, 7 foreign days in panel samples) exceeds national population medians reported by Hungarian and EU statistical authorities (typically 5–7 days per capita, including non-travelers; Eurostat, 2024; Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, 2024). However, as national statistics do not provide benchmarks for the subset of the population who actually engage in tourism (i.e., the “tourist population”), direct comparisons to the average European or global tourist are not possible. Our findings therefore generalize specifically to travel-active adults rather than the general population or modal tourist. Importantly, the explicit purpose of including these campus-based university samples was twofold. First, they extend the empirical scope of the study beyond the demographic and cultural profile of the main panel samples. This age-diverse data structure allowed an initial exploratory check of age-related patterns and tentative cultural invariance. Second, the campus samples furnish independent datasets for nomological validity testing – enabling correlations between Limen Scale scores and established tourism constructs to be examined in a demographic segment distinct from the primary validation pool. Rather than serving to numerically balance the panel, the campus samples were recruited to facilitate direct comparative analysis and to test whether the principal empirical patterns – such as the monotonic age-related decline in liminoid experiences – replicate among younger, culturally diverse populations. Primary validation, reliability, and invariance analyses were conducted using the panel data, while the university samples provided a critical means to evaluate whether the core findings replicate across our two student comparisons; no inference is made beyond these samples. Main cross-sample results, including nomological tests, are summarized in the Results section, with full item-level comparisons reported in Appendix 10.

Initial Domain Definition

Item Generation

Recognizing the ambiguity surrounding liminal and liminoid constructs in existing literature, we extended beyond Turner’s classical framework. A systematic review of 74 influential publications – 40 from tourism studies and 34 from relevant social science disciplines – was conducted. Selection criteria included theoretical relevance and citation impact (Google Scholar). This review encompassed diverse domains such as anthropology, event studies, spatial theory, mobility research, and leisure sociology. Table 2 presents selected key publications that were foundational to our research.

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Table 2.

Selected Key Literature.

Author(s) & year	Core concept discussed	Conceptualization (key attributes)	Tourism context/application	Measurement approach (if applicable)
Turner (1969, 1974b)	Liminal vs. liminoid	Obligatory rituals (structured, collective) vs. voluntary leisure experiences (individual, spontaneous)	Anthropological roots, pilgrimage tourism	Qualitative ethnographic methods
Graburn (1977, 1983)	Tourism as secular ritual	Structured inversions; vacation as symbolic ritualized transitions	Leisure and holiday tourism	Conceptual/theoretical discussion
E. Cohen (1979, 1988)	Phenomenology of tourist experiences	Authentic vs. staged experiences; meaningful vs. superficial engagements	Cultural tourism, pilgrimage, backpacking	Phenomenological qualitative analysis
Lett (1983)	Anti-structure and liminoid tourism behavior	Excessive hedonism, anti-structural behaviors, temporary abandonment of norms	Yacht tourism, leisure tourism	Qualitative observational analysis
Dann and Cohen (1991)	Tourist behaviors beyond everyday norms	Deviance from ordinary social norms; identity experimentation and playful behaviors	Youth and adventure tourism	Conceptual/theoretical discussion
MacCannell (1992)	Liminal spaces and staged authenticity	Ambiguous, socially negotiable boundary-crossings; frontstage vs. backstage interactions	Cultural and heritage tourism	Semiotic, interpretative approaches
Selänniemi (2003)	Hedonistic, playful tourism consumption	Leisure, escapism, and consumption of liminoid leisure experiences	Beach and resort tourism	Qualitative ethnographic methods
Spiegel (2011)	Coexistence of liminal and liminoid traits	Simultaneous and overlapping liminal-liminoid experiences as poles on continua	Conceptual/theoretical tourism contexts	Conceptual/theoretical discussion
Andrews and Roberts (2012)	Spatial and landscape liminality	Marginal, ambiguous landscapes and physical spaces of transition	Ruins, beaches, national parks	Conceptual/theoretical discussion
Thomassen (2014)	Scalability and degrees of liminality	Liminal experiences differ by intensity, radical departures from ordinary norms	General theoretical foundations	Conceptual/theoretical discussion
Zhang and Xu (2019)	Emotional and experiential liminality	Emotional arousal, romance, relaxation, and encounters	Chinese cultural tourism (Yanyu tourism)	Quantitative scale development
Taheri et al. (2016, 2018)	Escapist and hedonic tourism motivations	Temporary detachment, hedonic consumption, freedom from everyday structures	Nightlife tourism, hospitality contexts	Mixed qualitative-quantitative methods

We conducted a qualitative content analysis to extract recurring experiential dimensions classified explicitly or implicitly as liminal or liminoid. From this, 80 candidate items were generated to reflect balanced coverage across conceptual themes such as hedonism, norm inversion, role play, spatial ambiguity, and ritual framing. This initial item pool is presented in Appendix 1. Four distinct stakeholder groups assessed the items: non-tourism scholars and tourism academics (n = 8), who had published high-quality work on limen experiences (n = 8), tourism professionals (n = 29), and members of the target population (n = 144). These groups rated each item for clarity, relevance, and theoretical fit. Following the pilot exploratory factor analysis, we employed a Cross-Entropy optimization approach with Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling for statistical refinement (Rubinstein & Kroese, 2004), ensuring theoretical oppositions were preserved. Our approach enabled preservation of theoretical oppositions while optimizing expert agreement – constraints that standard factor analysis does not directly incorporate. For example, conventional exploratory factor analysis might have grouped items based solely on statistical clustering, potentially placing theoretically opposed items together (e.g., both “tradition” and “spontaneity” could load on a general “experience intensity” factor despite representing opposite poles of the liminal-liminoid continuum). Cross-entropy optimization helped differentiate opposing poles – for instance, “Freedom of Choice” clearly aligned with liminoid characteristics while “Traditions” aligned with liminal ones.

Initial Dimension Identification

Our Cross-Entropy analysis integrated three key metrics: consensus scores reflecting rater agreement, relevance scores indicating dimension importance, and limen scores differentiating between liminal and liminoid characteristics (Table 3).

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Table 3.

Shortlist from the 80-Item Pool.

Dimensions	Consensus scores	Relevance scores	Limen scores
Autonomy	292	4.95	6.10
Experimenting	380	4.89	5.43
Entertainment	250	4.85	5.86
Discovery	357	4.85	4.33
Personality change	448	4.85	5.81
Relaxation	324	4.82	5.32
Individualism	449	4.78	6.00
Nature related experiences	478	4.70	3.67
Sense of calmness	508	4.70	5.83
Emotions	629	4.69	4.00
Spontaneous experiences	265	4.64	5.14
Playfulness	275	4.64	5.14
Freedom of choice	325	4.59	6.14
Excitement	358	4.56	4.71
Personal growth	576	4.45	3.57
Consumption	385	4.44	5.67
Music	428	4.40	4.43
Humor	261	4.39	5.29
Creativity	242	4.26	4.86
Escape from home	345	4.21	6.14
Collectivism	332	4.08	3.12
Anticipation	406	4.08	4.13
Traditions	327	4.07	2.71
Mindfulness	576	3.99	3.86
Respect	277	3.93	3.33
Equality	245	3.90	4.14

Inclusion and Exclusion of Dimensions

Building on the cross-entropy analysis, the final selection of dimensions was guided by a hierarchical, two-step process that combined theoretical considerations and numeric thresholds derived from consensus, relevance, and limen scores.

Numeric Criteria (Second Priority)

For dimensions that passed the theoretical screen, we applied three numeric filters:

Consensus Scores: We favored dimensions with consensus scores below ~400, indicating stronger expert agreement (Higher scores imply more disagreement among raters.)

Relevance Scores: We retained only those with relevance scores above 4, ensuring the item was considered important for tourism contexts.

Limen Scores: If an item’s limen score hovered near 4.0, it meant experts perceived it as equally liminal and liminoid – thus not helping to distinguish the two poles. We generally excluded or down-prioritized such ambiguous items in favor of those leaning clearly to one side (<4 = more liminal; >4 = more liminoid.

In Table 4 we summarize why each dimension in our short-listed pool was either included or excluded under these criteria.

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Table 4.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria.

Dimension	Status	Theoretical rationale	Numeric results	Decision factors
Exploration (merged from Discovery + Experimenting)	Included	Central to liminoid tourism experiences emphasizing novelty; pairs with “Familiarity” pole	Relevance > 4, consensus < 400, limen score > 4 (liminoid)	Included as “Exploration vs. Familiarity”
Freedom to (merged from Autonomy + Freedom of Choice)	Included	Key attribute of liminoid experiences; opposed to “Being Constrained”	Consensus < 400, relevance > 4, limen score > 4.5 (strongly liminoid)	Included as “Freedom to vs. Being Constrained”
Freedom from (renamed from Escape from Home)	Included	Canonical tourism motivation tied to liminoid “escape”; opposed by “Attachment to Routine”	Consensus ~345, relevance > 4, limen score > 4 (liminoid)	Included as “Freedom from vs. Attachment to Routine”
Individualism	Included	Strongly tied to liminoid phenomena; directly opposed by “Collectivism”	Consensus ~449, relevance ~4.78, limen score ~6.0 (clearly liminoid)	Included as “Individualism vs. Collectivism”
Personality Change	Included	Reflects ephemeral, individually driven behaviors linked to liminoid states	Consensus ~448, relevance > 4, limen score ~5.8 (strongly liminoid)	Included given high theoretical value in capturing personal shifts
Collectivism	Included	Captures social bonding, group integration-classic liminal qualities	Consensus ~332, relevance ~4.08, limen score ~3.12 (liminal)	Included despite lower numeric appeal due to theoretical importance
Spontaneous Experiences	Excluded	Overlaps with “Exploration” + “Freedom to”; no distinct opposing pole	-	Redundant with included dimensions
Playfulness	Excluded	Shares conceptual ground with “Experimenting” and “Exploration”	-	Lacks strong theoretical contrast pole for liminal states
Consumption	Excluded	Difficult to identify specific, theoretically grounded opposite	-	Too broad for the liminal-liminoid distinction
Traditions	Excluded	Already captured by “Collectivism” and ritual aspect of liminality	-	Introduced redundancy
Respect	Excluded	Lacks clear liminal-liminoid tension	-	“Disrespect” too diffuse as opposing pole
Equality	Excluded	Opposite does not map onto liminoid vs. liminal experiences	-	Limited theoretical fit

Note. The dimensions presented in this table represent both the included dimensions that formed our final scale and key examples of excluded dimensions from our shortlist of 26 potential candidates. Additional dimensions that appeared in the shortlist (e.g., Entertainment, Relaxation, Nature-related experiences, Sense of calmness, Emotions, Personal growth, Music, Humor, Creativity, Anticipation, Mindfulness) were excluded during the initial theoretical screening phase because they lacked clear opposing poles, overlapped with higher-priority constructs, or didn’t capture a distinct liminal-liminoid tension. The complete original pool of 80 dimensions is available in Appendix 1.

Empirical Validation of Continuum Logic

Figure 2 confirms that scores are widely dispersed across all five continua, demonstrating that respondents treat each pair as a graded continuum rather than two independent variables. Younger travelers (18–34) locate themselves markedly closer to the liminoid pole than older travelers (65+), with 22- to 27-point differences on the Freedom dimensions (Hedges g = 0.82–0.91). Nomological tests are theory-consistent: Exploration and Freedom-to correlate positively with Travel Career Pattern novelty seeking (r = .42 and 0.27), while Individualism aligns with Self-Congruity (r = .21). Together, distributional breadth, known-groups contrasts, and theory-consistent correlations converge to validate the bipolar structure of the five continua. Items with ambiguous limen scores were excluded, ensuring each retained construct shows clear positioning.

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Figure 2.

Empirical distributions of respondent scores on the five liminoid-liminal continua.

The histograms reveal broad dispersion across the full theoretical range rather than clustering at extremes, confirming that the continua function as meaningful, continuous variables for subsequent analyses.

Domain Definition

Personality Change Versus Personality Status Quo

Liminoid Pole (Personality Change)

Captures ephemeral, individually driven behavioral shifts – “vacation personas” – that occur outside formal rites. These shifts lack social recognition or structured reintegration (Turner, 1969), and align with Turner’s liminoid concept of voluntary, reversible transformations in modern contexts (Turner, 1974b, pp. 39–41).

Liminal Pole (Personality Status Quo)

Reflects maintenance of core identity despite changed settings, paradoxically mirroring how liminal rites ultimately reinforce social structures (Turner, 1969).

This continuum illustrates the pattern inversion outlined in the Literature Review: the behavioral shifts tourists report may look transformative, yet their voluntary, playful character places them on the liminoid side of the continuum. Liminoid behavior is commonplace during vacations (Baltaci & Cakici, 2022a), supporting Kahana’s (2024) contention that tourism settings are more accurately characterized as liminoid than liminal. Although instruments exist for discrete tourist behaviors (Cheng et al., 2013; Tsaur et al., 2018), systematic measurement of travelers’ self-perceived behavioral change remains scarce. While Freedom to and Individualism share conceptual ground in emphasizing autonomy, factor analysis (details in next section) confirmed they capture distinct aspects of the tourism experience. Freedom to measures behavioral autonomy – the ability to act without external constraints during vacation. Individualism captures social preference – the desire for solitary versus group experiences. The moderate correlation between these dimensions (r = .183) suggests that travelers can experience behavioral freedom while still preferring group activities, or feel constrained despite preferring solitude. Figure 3 illustrates how the continuum operates in practice, showing that intermediate positions represent genuine mixed states rather than measurement artifacts. For example, a tourist scoring 60% Exploration/40% Familiarity might engage in “Guided Discovery” – structured exploration that balances novelty-seeking with comfort zones.

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Figure 3.

The liminal-liminoid continuum in practice.

Scale Development Results

Unless noted otherwise, all psychometric properties and validation results refer to the panel samples. Subgroup results for campus samples are included in the Supplemental Material.

Factor Structure

The Solomon Test demonstrated excellent potential sample equivalence with a communality ratio (S) of 0.9977. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin values for the theoretical subsamples were 0.7995 and 0.7977, indicating good sampling adequacy. Factor analysis confirmed the five-dimension structure (Table 5), with factor loadings ranging from 0.498 to 0.974.

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Table 5.

Exploratory Factor Analysis Results.

Factor	Indicator	Communalities	Item-total correlation	Loading
Exploration	E1	0.47	.282	0.675
	E2	0.563	.307	0.753
	E3	0.426	.333	0.58
	E4	0.761	.346	0.858
	E5	0.483	.224	0.708
	E6	0.657	.306	0.826
Freedom to	FT1	0.882	.406	0.974
	FT2	0.807	.392	0.937
	FT3	0.678	.416	0.784
	FT4	0.523	.596	0.498
	FT5	0.508	.606	0.528
Freedom from	FF1	0.695	.545	0.814
	FF2	0.78	.527	0.88
	FF3	0.691	.5	0.766
	FF4	0.523	.473	0.507
	FF5	0.617	.496	0.804
	FF6	0.522	.494	0.747
Individualism	I1	0.714	.499	0.862
	I2	0.637	.533	0.772
	I3	0.711	.452	0.883
	I4	0.417	.361	0.656
	I5	0.485	.515	0.602
	I6	0.731	.498	0.855
Personality change	P1	0.608	.561	0.781
	P2	0.678	.539	0.867
	P3	0.676	.541	0.843
	P4	0.479	.574	0.498
	P5	0.64	.559	0.819
	P6	0.684	.604	0.796

Note. Highlighted indicators were kept for the validation study.

Factor analysis results guided item reduction while maintaining construct coverage. Items were excluded based on multiple criteria, including low item-total correlations, substantial cross-loadings, and theoretical considerations. Additionally, the “importance” indicators were removed during the validation stage because they reflected a separate layer of meaning – one that focused on subjective significance rather than the direct presence or intensity of the experiences themselves. We treated cross-loadings of ≥0.30 as indicative of potential overlap, but in practice, all cross-loadings in our pilot data were under 0.30 ranging from 0.11 to 0.28 (see Appendix 4 for the full pattern matrix), eliminating the need to remove dimensions or items on that basis. Therefore, dimension-level decisions primarily rested on conceptual considerations and overall factor coherence, rather than on problematic cross-loadings.

Validation Results

Reliability Evidence

Bayesian reliability analysis demonstrated consistently high values across dimensions (McDonald’s ω: 0.764–0.869). The analysis revealed strong internal consistency across both pilot and validation samples, with minimal variation between studies except for the “Freedom From” dimension (Table 6).

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Table 6.

Bayesian Reliability Estimates.

Dimension	McDonald’s ω [95% CI]	Cronbach’s α [95% CI]	Greatest lower bound [95% CI]
Explore (P)	0.832 [0.815, 0.849]	.832 [0.814, 0.848]	0.873 [0.858, 0.889]
Free to (P)	0.917 [0.908, 0.926]	.914 [0.905, 0.924]	0.917 [0.908, 0.926]
Free from (P)	0.883 [0.871, 0.895]	.881 [0.868, 0.893]	0.884 [0.871, 0.896]
Individ. (P)	0.882 [0.869, 0.895]	.882 [0.870, 0.896]	0.883 [0.869, 0.895]
Pers. cha. (P)	0.881 [0.868, 0.893]	.880 [0.868, 0.892]	0.903 [0.890, 0.914]
Explore (V)	0.810 [0.789, 0.828]	.806 [0.785, 0.826]	0.844 [0.824, 0.862]
Free to (V)	0.867 [0.852, 0.881]	.862 [0.846, 0.877]	0.867 [0.852, 0.881]
Free from (V)	0.765 [0.740, 0.791]	.758 [0.732, 0.786]	0.766 [0.742, 0.793]
Individ. (V)	0.869 [0.855, 0.884]	.869 [0.856, 0.884]	0.870 [0.856, 0.884]
Pers. cha. (V)	0.820 [0.802, 0.839]	.815 [0.796, 0.835]	0.834 [0.816, 0.854]

Note. P = pilot; V = validation.

Validity Evidence

Validity testing revealed strong psychometric properties across all dimensions (Table 7). Average Variance Extracted values exceeded 0.5, and Maximum Shared Variance values remained below Average Variance Extracted for all factors. The strongest relationship emerged between Freedom dimensions (r = .340), while the weakest appeared between Exploration and Personality Change (r = .089).

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Table 7.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity.

Factor	CR	AVE	MSV	ASV	sqrt(AVE)	Correlations (All)
Exploration	0.816	0.530	0.086	0.039	0.728	0.293, 0.294, 0.127, 0.089
Freedom to	0.865	0.683	0.1159	0.051	0.827	0.293, 0.340, 0.183, 0.157
Freedom from	0.764	0.521	0.1159	0.052	0.722	0.294, 0.340, 0.184, 0.156
Individualism	0.869	0.69	0.053	0.027	0.831	0.127, 0.183, 0.184, 0.231
Personality change	0.820	0.537	0.053	0.022	0.733	0.089, 0.157, 0.156, 0.231

Note. CR (Composite Reliability) indicates the measure of internal consistency reliability among variables within each factor. AVE (Average Variance Extracted) represents the average amount of variance in indicator variables that a construct has explained. MSV (Maximum Shared Variance) shows the maximum variance that a factor shares with other factors in the model. ASV (Average Shared Variance) represents the mean variance shared between a factor and all other factors in the model. sqrt(AVE) (Square Root of Average Variance Extracted) is used to assess discriminant validity when compared to factor correlations.

Measurement Invariance

Analysis confirmed the scale’s consistency across gender groups, as shown in Table 8, and most age categories, though strict invariance across age groups was not achieved. The factor structure remained stable across the demographic groups included in our sample; however, the sample’s strong skew toward older Hungarian adults and limited representation of other groups precludes any assertion of broad applicability.

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Table 8.

Gender Invariance.

Invariance level	ΔCFI	ΔRMSEA	ΔSRMR
Metric Invariance (compared to configural)	−0.001	−0.001	0.002
Scalar Invariance (compared to metric)	−0.002	0.001	−0.002
Strict Invariance (compared to scalar)	−0.012	0.005	0.001
Structural Invariance (compared to strict)	−0.008	0.003	0.016

Note. ΔCFI (Change in Comparative Fit Index) represents the difference in CFI values between two models, used to evaluate measurement invariance. ΔRMSEA (Change in Root Mean Square Error of Approximation) indicates the difference in RMSEA values between two models, assessing the change in model fit. ΔSRMR (Change in Standardized Root Mean Square Residual) shows the difference in SRMR values between two models, evaluating the change in residual fit.

Liminal-Liminoid Distribution Patterns

The validation study revealed distinct patterns across dimensions (Figure 4). The Exploration dimension showed strong liminoid tendencies, with high mean scores for seeking new experiences (66.56%) and discovering natural beauty (62.30%). Freedom dimensions similarly leaned toward liminoid characteristics, with Freedom from scoring highest in escaping responsibilities (70.50%).

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Figure 4.

Mean values for liminoid-liminal pairs.

The Individualism dimension presented a more balanced profile, with scores hovering around the midpoint for self-expression (51.79%) and solitary experiences (50.52%). The Personality Change dimension leaned toward the liminal pole, with markedly lower scores for transformation opportunities (38.95%) and behavioral changes (37.86%).

The absence of bimodal distributions or extreme clustering in these data demonstrates that respondents position themselves along continua rather than selecting discrete categories.

Dimensional Interactions

Analysis revealed complex interaction patterns within the Limenscape (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

Dimensional interactions.

The correlation map (Figure 3) shows that the two Freedom continua cluster most closely (r ≈ .34), while Exploration connects moderately to each. Individualism aligns modestly with all dimensions, strongest with Personality Change (r ≈ .23), whereas Exploration and Personality Change remain largely independent (r ≈ .09). These patterns confirm that no single factor dominates; each continuum taps a distinct aspect of threshold experience. Beyond these core dimensional relationships, additional exploratory analyses examining intrinsic-extrinsic effects, including relationships between dimension importance and vacation valuation as well as attribution patterns, are reported in Appendix 11.

Relative Importance of Dimensions

Analysis revealed three key patterns supporting the Limenscape concept (Figure 6). First, dimension importance ratings showed a clear hierarchical structure. Freedom from routine emerged as most central (mean = 5.04), followed by Exploration (4.61) and Freedom to act (4.60). Individual Aspects (3.09) and Personal Change (2.99) played secondary roles.

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Figure 6.

Relative importance of dimensions.

Age-Related Differences in Liminal-Liminoid Experiences

Panel Data

To isolate substantively meaningful patterns, we applied Welch-corrected ANOVAs and retained only those bipolar items whose age contrasts exceeded both statistical (α = .05) and practical (Hedges g ≥ 0.30) thresholds. The resulting profile (Table 9) pinpoints five core facets in which liminoid vacation experiences deteriorate monotonically from early adulthood to later life.

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Table 9.

Key Vacation Outcomes Age Group.

Indicators	Welch test p	Largest significant Games-Howell contrast	Mean gap (0-100)	Hedges g
“Behave as I want”	<.001	25-34 > 65+	+21.8	0.89
“Dress as I want”	<.001	18-24 > 65+	+20.7	0.88
“Talk as I want”	<.001	25-34 > 65+	+23.2	0.88
“Thinking changes”	<.001	18-24 > 65+	+22.5	0.78
“Discover new natural sights”	<.001	18-24 > 65+	+7.7	0.34

Note. Age-group codes: 1 = 18-24, 2 = 25-34, 3 = 35-44, 4 = 55-64, 5 = 65+. Only the active side of each bipolar slider is shown; the complementary statement equals 100 − score and is omitted to avoid redundancy.

Robust Welch tests, followed by Games-Howell contrasts, indicate that age-related differences concentrate in autonomy and openness: younger travelers report markedly greater freedom to act, speak and dress as they wish, and stronger cognitive change while away. Effect sizes are large (g ≈ 0.8–0.9) for all three behavioral items and the thinking scale, and moderate (g ≈ 0.3) for discovering new natural sights. No other novelty or social-orientation indicator exceeded a g = 0.30 threshold. Thus, the older group’s profile is defined less by social motives than by a pronounced retreat from self-directed novelty and autonomy.

Resolving Measurement Challenges

Our findings challenge established theoretical relationships in tourism literature. The negligible correlation between Exploration and Personality Change (r = .089) contradicts the widely-held assumption that novelty-seeking catalyzes personal transformation (E. Cohen, 1972; Pearce & Lee, 2005). This disconnect becomes intelligible through age-stratified analysis: younger travelers (18–34) maintain the expected novelty-transformation link, while older cohorts (65+) seek novel experiences without accompanying identity change. Such pronounced age variations warrant further investigation into how demographic factors moderate transformation processes in tourism contexts. The relationship between individualism and vacation valuation proved equally counterintuitive. Respondents scoring lower on the Individualism dimension were 4.39 times more likely to rate vacations as highly important – challenging assumptions about tourism’s increasingly individualistic nature (Hofstede, 1980; Santos et al., 2017). This suggests that collective travel orientations may enhance rather than diminish tourism’s perceived significance. The paired-percentage format, requiring respondents to position themselves between individualistic and collectivistic poles, facilitated detection of this unexpected relationship by capturing relative preferences rather than absolute intensities.

Theoretical Advancement

Our five-continuum scale empirically validates Turner’s distinction between structured, communal liminal episodes and voluntary, autonomy-driven liminoid play (Turner, 1974b). Exploration and both Freedom continua load on the liminoid pole, whereas Collectivism and Status-Quo items align with the liminal pole. This confirms that Turner’s organizing principles remain detectable in contemporary tourism while advancing the continuum vision proposed by Graburn (1983) and Spiegel (2011): liminal and liminoid tendencies can coexist in graded proportions, not as binaries. The age-contingent nature of the Exploration-Personality Change relationship reveals how transformation operates differently across life stages. Turner’s distinction between obligatory liminal transformation and optional liminoid experimentation gains new nuance: our data suggest that even within liminoid tourism, the transformation potential varies systematically by age. Younger travelers appear to use novel experiences as identity laboratories, while older travelers seek novelty for its own sake, maintaining stable identities. This life-stage specification extends threshold theory beyond Turner’s original voluntary/obligatory distinction.

Methodological Innovation

The Limen Experiences in Tourism Scale addresses past shortcomings by combining a five-continuum architecture with a paired-percentage response format. The latter obliges travelers to make explicit trade-offs, yielding proportional data and exposing subtle overlaps in liminal and liminoid strivings that ordinal scales conceal. The paired-percentage format proved feasible despite initial concerns about cognitive demands, with completion rates and reliability matching traditional scales. While the method demonstrated measurement invariance across several demographic groups, full cross-cultural validation remains a priority for future research (see Limitations for detailed discussion).

With this methodological foundation established, we can now examine how the scale reveals patterns that previous measurement approaches obscured.

Empirical Findings and Their Theoretical Implications

The dimensional relationships revealed through our analysis both confirm and challenge established tourism theory. As expected, Exploration strongly predicts perceived holiday importance, reaffirming novelty-seeking as a core tourism motivation (Pearce & Lee, 2005). Similarly, both Freedom dimensions – Freedom to Act and Freedom from Routine – emerge as significant predictors of vacation valuation, supporting longstanding conceptualizations of tourism as escape (Dann, 1981). These confirmatory findings validate our scale’s alignment with foundational tourism constructs. More revealing are the age-related patterns that emerged across dimensions. Freedom-seeking and transformational orientations show marked generational differences, with scores declining systematically from younger (18–34) to older (65+) cohorts. These age gradients illuminate why the overall correlation between Exploration and Personality Change appears negligible – the relationship exists but varies dramatically across life stages. This finding suggests that tourism’s psychological functions may fundamentally shift with age, from identity experimentation in youth to experience accumulation in later life. The scale’s nomological network further establishes its theoretical positioning. Moderate correlations with established measures – such as the alignment between our Exploration dimension and Travel Career Pattern’s novelty-seeking (r = .42) – demonstrate convergent validity while maintaining sufficient independence to justify the new instrument. The relatively modest correlation between Personality Change and existing transformation scales (r = .35) suggests our continuum-based approach captures aspects of identity fluidity that single-pole measures miss.

These theoretical and empirical advances carry direct implications for tourism practice, as we explore in the following section.

Relevance of the Liminal-Liminoid Construct for Tourism Practice

The Limen Experiences in Tourism Scale translates decades of anthropological theory into a practical diagnostic tool for the tourism industry addressing four key needs:

Practical Applications of the Limen Experiences Scale

The Limen Experiences in Tourism Scale offers destination managers a novel diagnostic framework for understanding how visitors engage with structure, autonomy, and identity across the tourism spectrum. Its paired-percentage methodology enables more nuanced segmentation than traditional ordinal tools, but also demands careful implementation – both methodologically and contextually. Given the exploratory nature of our cross-cultural validation, we recommend cautious piloting within specific local settings before broader deployment.

To guide such implementation, we propose a five-step process that moves from assessment to design and strategic intervention. This conceptual scaffold can support destination managers, experience designers, and policy-makers in translating liminal theory into applied practice:

In the following section, we present a destination-specific scenario – a managerial playbook – demonstrating how this five-step framework can be operationalized at heritage tourism sites. This applied case study translates the conceptual model into concrete interventions, marketing strategies, and evaluation metrics aligned with the scale’s psychometric dimensions.

Managerial Playbook: Operationalizing the Limen Scale at Heritage Sites

This illustrative case study demonstrates how the Limen framework can be applied within a heritage tourism context. While grounded in our validated psychometric model, the following strategies are intended as adaptable templates, not prescriptive rules, and should be calibrated to local visitor profiles, cultural expectations, and site-specific constraints.

Integrating with Previous Literature and Future Directions

The interplay of Freedom dimensions and Exploration resonates with classic push-pull motivational frameworks (Pearce & Lee, 2005), now empirically quantified through our paired-percentage methodology. The unexpected Individualism patterns challenge Western-centric assumptions in tourism theory (Hofstede, 1980; Triandis, 2001), while the modest Exploration-Personality Change correlation suggests novelty exposure alone does not drive transformation. Future research should pursue multiple directions. Longitudinal designs could assess temporal stability of liminal-liminoid preferences across travel contexts. Cross-cultural studies beyond our Hungarian-centered samples are essential to establish broader generalizability. Technology-mediated tourism research could examine how digital tools influence the intrinsic-extrinsic balance of these dimensions. Theoretical integration offers additional opportunities. Investigating whether specific liminal-liminoid configurations predict Turner’s communitas during festivals or examining connections with flow theory and mindfulness could enrich understanding of optimal tourist experiences. Such interdisciplinary approaches may reveal how threshold experiences operate within broader experiential frameworks in contemporary tourism.

Methodological Format Constraints

Although the paired-percentage format is novel, it still needs to be tested in a wider range of cultural settings. A critical limitation affecting our age-related findings is the cross-sectional design, which confounds age, cohort, and period effects. The observed patterns associated with different age groups could reflect: (1) age effects (developmental changes that occur as individuals age), (2) cohort effects (differences between people born in different eras who experienced different historical contexts), or (3) period effects (contemporary influences affecting different age groups differently). Our design cannot distinguish between these three explanations. Longitudinal research tracking the same individuals over time would be necessary to determine whether these patterns represent stable developmental changes, generational differences in values and preferences, or other factors. Additionally, longitudinal or panel data could reveal whether changes in Exploration or Freedom dimensions reflect stable preferences or contextual shifts.

Sample Composition and Cultural Generalizability

Sample composition and generalizability considerations include our multi-age group approach strengthening the findings, with campus samples (mean ages 22–25) complementing panel samples (mean ages 56–57). However, certain demographic patterns require cautious interpretation. The consistent female overrepresentation (66–70%) and predominantly Hungarian composition of panel samples limit generalizability to male travelers or other national contexts. Small regional subsamples for measurement invariance analyses, particularly for Africa (n = 45) and the Middle East (n = 32), fall well below established thresholds for robust multi-group CFA (Cheung & Lau, 2012; Meade et al., 2005). This results in low statistical power and potentially unstable parameter estimates. Consequently, cultural invariance results should be interpreted strictly as preliminary, not supporting substantive claims of cross-cultural generalizability. Beyond statistical constraints, potential cultural variability in the interpretation of core dimensions such as “Freedom from Routine” or “Individualism” must be considered. For instance, collectivist cultures may interpret “escape from routine” not as a personal liberation but as a disruption of familial or social obligations. Likewise, the continuum-based nature of liminal-liminoid experiences may be read differently in hierarchical or ritual-centric societies, where transitional states hold sacred rather than playful connotations. Moreover, the paired-percentage scaling format, while psychometrically robust in our samples, may not align with response tendencies in cultures that emphasize harmony or ambivalence, potentially requiring adaptation. Future cross-cultural studies should not only test statistical invariance but also examine how cultural scripts shape respondents’ interpretive schemas.

Implementation and Platform Limitations

Implementation and measurement challenges include platform constraints preventing collection of completion time and dropout data, limiting definitive assessment of respondent fatigue beyond proxy measures. Any undetected fatigue would likely have increased error variance and attenuated effect sizes, making our findings conservative. Future research should employ survey platforms capable of tracking completion times and dropout patterns to provide more definitive evidence regarding respondent burden in paired-percentage scaling formats. While the Limen framework offers a theoretically grounded approach to understanding tourism experiences, successful implementation requires addressing the cognitive demands of the paired-percentage format. Destinations should consider their target respondent populations, available survey infrastructure, and response rate requirements when deciding whether to implement the full scale or adapt it for their specific contexts.

Theoretical Adaptation and Conceptual Boundaries

Theoretical framework adaptation considerations include our operationalization of liminal-liminoid concepts, while grounded in Turner’s theoretical distinctions, necessarily adapting his anthropological framework for tourism contexts. The extent to which our dimensional structure captures Turner’s original conceptualization versus representing a tourism-specific extension requires further theoretical development and empirical validation.

This research represents an important advance in understanding liminal-liminoid experiences, though several limitations warrant attention. By integrating theoretical insights from Turner, Graburn, and Spiegel with a novel measurement approach, we have moved beyond broad conceptual discussions to offer empirical evidence validated across mature and younger traveler cohorts. The Limen framework provides an initial foundation for studying threshold experiences, though its broader applicability awaits validation in more diverse cultural and demographic contexts. As subsequent research tests and refines these concepts, we anticipate a richer, more adaptive understanding of how liminal and liminoid states shape tourism phenomena and ultimately enrich the traveler’s journey.