Limenscape: Operationalizing the Liminoid and the Liminal in Tourism

This study introduces the Limen Experiences in Tourism Scale , a paired-percentage instrument that operationalizes Turner’s liminal-liminoid framework as five bipolar continua Exploration-Familiarity, Freedom to-Constraint, Freedom from Routine-Attachment, Individualism-Collectivism, and Personality Change-Status Quo. Validation with 2,432 adult travelers from panel and university samples confirmed a stable five-factor structure and revealed clear age gradients: respondents aged 18 to 34 located themselves over 20 percentage-points nearer the liminoid pole on both Freedom continua than those aged 65+. The scale enables destinations to pinpoint visitor positions – for example, 60% Exploration/40% Familiarity – and design calibrated offerings that range from “guided discovery” itineraries for ambivalent explorers to ritualized group formats for liminal seekers. By empirically demonstrating that liminal and liminoid coexist as measurable degrees rather than discrete states, the findings also resolve a long-standing conceptual divide in tourism studies. Generalizability remains constrained by the Hungary-centric sampling frame; future research should replicate the continuum across diverse cultural contexts and test how positional scores predict behavioral and affective outcomes.