CAREER ANXIETY AMONG TOURISM GUIDANCE STUDENTS: EXPLORING FEARS OF AI-DRIVEN TECHNOLOGICAL DISPLACEMENT

Résumé fourni par la source

There is an increasing body of academic research on how artificial intelligence (AI) will disrupt tourism, but there is a gap in studying tourism guidance students’ career anxiety—who are perhaps most likely to experience job displacement from AI—and in testing educational conditions that act as moderators of their anxiety. This study fills that gap by examining AIrelated career anxiety, perceptions of threat, and coping profiles among 312 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduatelevel tourism guidance courses at three Egyptian universities. Based on the Career Transition Theory, we found five dimensions of anxiety: fear of being displaced by information supersession; economic insecurity; professional identity humiliation; emotional role redundancy; and self-doubt related to adaptability. All five anxiety dimensions were identified as being of great concern. However, Students whose curriculum included a component related to the direct application of AI were found to have a 0.63 standard deviation reduction in anxiety. The study produced three distinct coping profiles - Active Adapters, Uncertain Pragmatists, and Anxious Resisters - all of which demonstrated starkly different trajectories regarding commitment to their careers. The results have implications for how universities reform their curricula, for how career counselling is provided, and for how national tourism workforces are assembled.