Holidays are sold on the return: the recharged person coming back to work. A Dutch study measured 1,530 people before and after, with 974 of them actually taking a trip, and compared them against people who stayed home. Both ends of the holiday were on the record, which lets the before and the after be weighed against each other. Which end came out ahead?
The happiness showed up before the trip, not after it. Vacationers reported higher happiness than while the holiday was still ahead of them, which the authors attribute to . Afterward, generally, there was no difference at all between the two groups. Only one kind of trip raised happiness further on return, and that was a one. Everything else returned people to where they started.
Holidays are justified by their aftermath. The whole case for taking one, as employers and travel companies make it, is the restored person who comes back. That makes the before-and-after comparison the obvious thing to run, and it had rarely been run against people who stayed at home.
A pre-test and post-test design covered 1,530 Dutch individuals, of whom 974 answered questions about their happiness both before and after a holiday trip. The rest did not travel, and so served as the comparison group across the same stretch of time.
The gap turned up at the wrong end. Vacationers reported higher happiness than non-vacationers before their trip, which the authors read as anticipation doing the work. After the holiday, generally, vacationers and non-vacationers did not differ. The one exception was a very relaxed trip, which did raise happiness further on return.
The authors interpret this through , need theory and comparison theory, all of which predict a return to baseline after a temporary disturbance. The practical implication is about where a holiday pays: in the looking forward rather than in the looking back. Note what the design cannot settle, though. People chose their own trips and rated their own relaxation, so the relaxed-trip result compares kinds of people as much as kinds of holiday.
wat. The holiday lifted people most while it was still ahead of them, and sent almost everyone home no happier than the ones who never went.
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It redistributes the value of a holiday. If most of the gain sits in the weeks of looking forward to it, then booking early and taking several short trips is better advice than saving up for one long one.
How do we know?
Nawijn and colleagues ran a pre-test and post-test design on 1,530 Dutch individuals, of whom 974 answered happiness questions both before and after a holiday trip.
What is still unknown
Self-reported happiness in one country, with people choosing their own holidays and their own degree of relaxation, so the relaxed-trip finding is a comparison between the sorts of people who take such trips.
Learn something?
Where to next
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