Digital nomads are portrayed as young professionals working solely in an online environment while leading a location independent and often travel reliant lifestyle where the boundaries between work, ...leisure and travel appear blurred. This paper aims to conceptualize the digital nomad phenomenon by establishing a definition of digital nomads. Further, it explores their motivations for adapting this lifestyle and how these are addressed in practice, and examines how work, leisure and travel are interpreted. Digital nomads aim to create a holistic lifestyle characterized by comprehensive freedom where both areas of life are regarded as equally enjoyable and do so through professional, spatial and personal freedom. Ideally, digital nomads perceive work not as an imposed obligation but regard it - much as their leisure activities - as intrinsically motivated and fulfilling. Although crucial for a positive perception of this lifestyle, travel comes with personal challenges that are considered a different type of work.
Although research on digital nomadism has been growing exponentially, its supply side, including government responses to this emerging class of mobile workers, remains under-explored. To address this ...gap, this paper systematically examines visa policies targeting digital nomads. By applying rigorous and replicable review methods to grey literature, it studies digital nomad visas implemented worldwide up to January 2023. The findings allow for categorisation of such policies, emphasising their heterogeneity of designs and implications. The findings reveal how digital nomad visas can reinforce governments' broader strategic priorities (mostly centred around tourism development), spur competition between countries, and redefine the notion of a ‘digital nomad’ from the host perspective, contributing to the broader discussion on the institutional context of digital nomadism.
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•Systematically reviews governments' policies targeted at digital nomads•Proposes categorisation of digital nomad visas based on their design and intentions•Discusses how policies capitalise on different impacts of digital nomadism•Notes a likely competition among countries to attract digital nomads•Proposes a definition of the digital nomad from the host's perspective
Since the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated digital transformation around the world, one notable trend in the tourism industry is the emergence of long-stay tourism, such as workcation which combines ...working and vacationing. Although workcation travel displays unique experiential characteristics compared with traditional travel experiences, conceptual and empirical knowledge on the nature and dimensional structure of such experiences is lacking. To fill this gap, this research conceptualizes workcation travel experiences and develops a multi-dimensional scale to measure the degree of such experiences. Based on the analysis of qualitative interviews, four workcation travel experience dimensions are identified: relaxing, improvised, autonomous, and localized experiences. Building on this, two online surveys with workcation travelers were conducted to develop a multi-dimensional scale of workcation travel experiences. Lastly, the nomological network of the developed scale with workcation satisfaction and revisit intentions was investigated. Theoretical and practical implications are provided.
Due to the increasing popularity of remote work, digital nomadism has become a growing trend. Given that digital nomads can stay in destinations longer, their contacts with residents become more ...dynamic, including numerous social conflicts. By drawing on realistic group conflict theory and social identity complexity, this paper investigates how the negative consequences of social conflicts can be mitigated to strengthen the digital nomads’ identification with the destination and increase revisit intention. Using a multi-national sample of 307 digital nomads from four popular destinations, we find that the negative consequences of social conflicts can be alleviated by stronger cooperative contact through which residents provide instrumental support to digital nomads. Moreover, we find that through enhanced identification and cooperative contact with residents, digital nomads also develop a localized identity that threatens their nomadic identity and thus reduces revisit intention. The study provides insights for practitioners on effectively catering to this segment of travelers.
The implications of waning desire for ownership on materialism are not well understood. This study examines the interface between materialism and consumption and asks, is materialism manifest in the ...absence of ownership centrality, and if so, how? Drawing from an interpretive investigation of digital nomads, it is suggested that materialism has broadened to adapt to non-ownership centrality, and we define it as a logic of consumption, which manifests as a preoccupation with the consumption of objects, access or experiences as a way to signal status, build image, pursue happiness, and attain a sense of self-worth. Three discrete but complementary ways through which materialism emerges in the absence of ownership centrality are identified: (1) preoccupation with strategic curation rather than accumulation, (2) intentional prioritization of experiential consumption over ownership as a means to fulfill materialistic aims, and (3) adoption of bricolages across spectrums of consumption (solid/liquid, budget/luxury, access/ownership).
Following the recent rise of digital nomadism, this study explores changing patterns of travel and work among highly mobile individuals. We draw on liquid modernity theory to analyze data from ...Reddit’s r/digitalnomad subreddit over 3.5 years. Fifteen topics and seven clusters capture the rich discussions. The most discussed topic was Destination review and recommendation, followed by Emotional needs and lifestyle choice. Regulatory issues also emerged as a significant concern. The pandemic influenced sentiment fluctuations over time, but the tone of topics remained mostly neutral. Our research provides nuanced insights into digital nomads’ habits, concerns, and lifestyle choices, showing how travel-related aspects feature front and center. For the tourism industry, our findings offer actionable suggestions to cater to this dynamic and economically powerful traveler group. Finally, and as a theoretical contribution, the study enhances our understanding of the role of global disruptive events, such as pandemics, in liquid modernity.
Liquid Consumer Security Atanasova, Aleksandrina; Eckhardt, Giana M; Husemann, Katharina C
The Journal of consumer research,
04/2024, Volume:
50, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
Systemic risks––pandemics, economic recessions, professional precarity, political volatility, and climate emergencies––increasingly erode previously taken-for-granted stabilities and ...consumers’ confidence in the future. How do consumers manage risk and uncertainty when economic and ontological security are on the decline? Traditionally, consumers have built a sense of security through solid consumption (e.g., home ownership, accumulating possessions). A four-year ethnography of digital nomadism, however, demonstrates that looming uncertainty can render solid consumption a source of vulnerability and an unwanted anchor in turbulent times that call for agility and adaptability. We outline the emergence of liquid consumer security, defined as a form of felt security that stems from avoidance of solid consumption and its risks and responsibilities. Liquid consumer security inheres in the absence of ownership, attachments, or rootedness, and is derived from circumventing the temporal demands, financial liabilities, and commitments that solid consumption requires, which emerge as sources of risk. It is achieved through a recursive process of engaging in three strategies: (1) solid risk minimization; (2) security reconstruction through the liquid marketplace; and (3) ideological legitimation. Contributions to consumer risk and security, liquid consumption, social theories of risk, and digital nomadism are discussed.
Despite the widespread adoption of workcations (work+vacations) in corporations, their managerial value in the post-pandemic era is questionable owing to the increasing shift toward in-person work by ...many companies. This research note explored the managerial effects of workcations from the perspectives of employees who have experienced them. In Study 1, we qualitatively identified the positive and negative effects of workcations, including increased levels of work engagement, enhanced innovation in tasks, and heightened security concerns. Building on the positive outcomes identified, for Study 2, we developed and tested a research model to reveal that workcation satisfaction improves work engagement, leading to increased intention to stay with the organization, innovative behaviors among employees, and a desire to engage in future workcation.
Digital nomads (DNs) are highly mobile professionals who work while travelling and travel while working. Their lifestyle has gained increasing academic attention, also from a communication ...perspective. Despite initial work on the topic, little is known about the self-presentation practices of DNs on social media. To address this lack of evidence and focusing on Instagram as a key platform for this group, we adopt a Goffmanian perspective. By using semi-structured interviews, we provide an in-depth analysis of their self-presentational practices, specifically their content strategies, imagined audience and use of platform affordances. The interviews included photo elicitation as a central element. The findings show how DNs highlight independence and freedom, de-emphasize work in favour of leisure and travel, develop audience management strategies that are mindful of the imagined audiences’ situation, while trying to foster reliability and authenticity and greatly value the flexibility and ephemerality of the Stories feature.
The economy is entrenched in the domestic and the domestic enables the economy. We consider this dialectical relationship between the economy and 'home' through a case study of coliving, a new type ...of privately delivered shared housing emerging in response to increasingly precarious economic conditions. We examine how the proliferation of coliving signifies shifting meanings and cultures of home for digital nomads, the latest iteration of the creative class. We draw upon a content analysis of twenty websites of coliving organisations located in New York and San Francisco, United States of America. Our analysis uncovers emergent meanings and cultures of home that are strongly associated with economic conditions. We consider how the spatial manifestations of a precarious economy are supported by new homemaking practices and imaginaries of home - what may be termed home cultures of precarity. Coliving challenges conventional meanings of home: a reprieve from work, private, secure and inhabited long term. Instead, home is a capital accumulation technology for this cohort - a site for the active production of capital. The ideal home for the new creative class is a place of work that is mobile and social. The economy, meanings of home and homemaking practices are co-productive and co-emergent.
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