What did you study?
I study the roles that sustainability has in tourist experiences. In my doctoral research, sustainability is examined from three perspectives: as a perception of the tourist, as a source of experiential value, and as a factor influencing how experiences are evaluated. The dissertation consists of three sub-studies that explore tourists’ experiences of sustainability in accommodation services, wellness tourism, and nature-based tourism.
What were the findings of your research, or what is its main conclusion?
The central finding of the study is that sustainability can influence the tourist experience in many different ways. It can enhance positive experiences and provide the experiential value of a tourism product, but it can also disrupt the experience or bias the way tourists evaluate what they have experienced. Sustainability is therefore not automatically experienced as positive. Rather, the experience depends on how well sustainability-related practices fit the specific tourism context and situation.
How can the results be applied? What new knowledge does this research provide?
The findings can be applied in tourism businesses when designing services that promote sustainability. They help practitioners understand how sustainability can be implemented in ways that support positive tourist experiences. The study contributes to sustainable tourism research by taking a more tourist-centered and experiential perspective. It also proposes a new way of understanding sustainability: sustainability should not be seen solely as a set of practices implemented by tourism businesses, but also as a phenomenon experienced by tourists.
M.Sc. (Econ.) Hanna-Maija Väisänen's doctoral dissertation in marketing "The Roles of Sustainability in Tourist Experience" will be examined on Friday, 27 November 2026, at 12:00 in Lecture Hall C4 of the University of Jyväskylä Main Building. The opponent is Professor Henna Konu (University of Eastern Finland), and the custos is Professor Outi Uusitalo (University of Jyväskylä).
The language of the dissertation event is Finnish.
Link to the doctoral dissertation: will be updated soon
Further information:
Hanna-Maija Väisänen
hanna-maija.vaisanen@helsinki.fi
