Exploring tourists’ schemas and information needs in drive tourism: A naturalistic inquiry to inform audio guide content

Drive tourism emphasizes exploration and autonomy, creating a demand for adaptable information delivery tailored to travelers’ unique needs. Through semi-structured interviews, this study explores tourists’ cognitive frameworks (schemas) of drive tourism and their information needs across destination levels—sites, cities, states, and countries. Five key themes emerged that define drive tourism experience: freedom, intimacy, short break, in-depth exploration, and landscape appreciation. In parallel, the study uncovers specific information needs at varying destination levels, with preferences for specific details like factual information and photographic opportunities at sites, local festivals at the city level, geographic insights at the state level, and customs and safety at the country level. By introducing schema-based audio guides that integrate the essence of drive tourism with destination-specific information, this study offers a novel approach to designing audio guides that enrich the drive tourism experience while expanding the theoretical understanding of both drive tourism and audio guide development.