Causality: Effects-of-Causes, Causes-of-Effects, and Question-Design Fit

Abstract

Causal claims sit at the center of many fields of inquiry, including tourism research, yet causal questions do not all ask the same thing. One class of questions asks what happens when a researcher, manager, or policymaker changes a condition ( effects-of-causes ). Another asks why an observed outcome arose in the first place ( causes-of-effects ). Drawing on causal inference scholarship, this letter distinguishes effects-of-causes from causes-of-effects and argues that conflating them narrows methodological choice and encourages claims that outrun design. Recognizing this distinction widens the methodological landscape of tourism research and allows scholars to employ diverse empirical strategies to investigate causal relationships. The letter sets boundaries around those alternatives by clarifying that no method becomes causal merely through its label and that defensible causal claims still require theory, explicit assumptions, and careful wording. Overall, greater precision about causal questions can strengthen theoretical contribution, sharpen empirical claims, and substantiate practical relevance.