The study was to explore phenomenon of templestay’s experience from the hermeneutic phenomenological perspective invented by van Manen(1990). This study adopted naturalistic inquiry research method to explore and analyze the essence, meaning and epistemological structure of templestay’s experience. In particular, this study examined epistemological frameworks from the ontological gaze in the theme of experience and authenticity of templestay.
This study analyzed the literatures, idioms, essays and documentary related to travel and templestay in the existential inquiry stage to enhance the insight and understanding of the participants’ experience of templestay. Then, in-depth interviews, comprising a total of 13 participants, were undertaken at templestay in Korea from June to December in 2016. Also, four fundamental lifeworld themes (or existentials) were used as heuristic guides for reflecting on experience of templestay: lived body (corporeality), lived space (spatiality), lived human relation (relationality or communality), and lived time (temporality).
From the four heuristic guides, four central themes were developed from the interviews; ‘Body that seeks for finding comfort and inner warmth (lived body)’, ‘Space that encompasses sacredness and profaneness (lived space)’, ‘Other person who are mirror images of you (lived human relation)’, and ‘Time that embraces life and death (lived time)’. A total of eight sub-themes emerged that more fully explicated the tourist experience.
Next, this study discovered the templestay participants’ perception of the tourism authenticity. Then, the study suggested the conceptual epistemological structure of templestay’s experience and showed how they interpreted and accepted the experience through their perception.
Finally, this study identified five type’s of authenticity from the templestay’s experience; (1) ‘Situational authenticity’, (2) ‘Superficial authenticity’, (3) ‘Relational authenticity’, (4) ‘Space time authenticity’, and (5) ‘Existential authenticity’
The academic value of this study is that the study applied naturalistic inquiry method which has been neglected in the field of tourism through ontological gaze and the epistemological framework to find meaningful and essential phenomenon of templestay’s experience.
However, this study has its limitation. To secure generalizability and transferability of conceptual epistemological framework and five tourism authenticity in templestay found in this study, positivistic and empirical research should be conducted to supplement this study continuously.