Tourism Scholars' Confusion About the Locus of Causality and Locus of Control Theories

Abstract

Tourists’ behavior has caused unprecedented studies to understand it. However, recent literature has exposed the fragility of understanding and reviewing tourist attribution, especially those established on the locus dimension. The locus dimension studies how tourists assign responsibilities to tourism events, whether internal and/or external causes. However, tourism literature is confused while utilizing the locus dimension. Tourism scholars mix between locus of causality (LOC) and locus of control (LOC) theories. Both have the same abbreviation, but both have different approaches. Therefore, the current study provides a new theoretical review tendency by applying a new concept, namely locus of personal traits (LOPT), with new measurement items for (LOC) and (LOPT). The study revealed that, far from the rhetoric occasionally linked with the locus of control, using the locus of personal traits will mitigate the substantial gap.