A hiya Perspective on Transgender Tourists' Experiences

Research on transgender travelers remains dominated by Western frameworks that overlook how cultural values shape the experience of minority stress. This study extends Minority Stress Theory (MST) using hiya, a native cultural value rooted in shame, propriety, and relational accountability, as a mechanism that mediates both psychological distress and coping among transgender tourists. Drawing on interviews and focus group discussions with 35 transgender travelers in the Philippines, we show how hiya functions as both a stressor, intensifying self-surveillance, identity concealment, and travel avoidance, and a coping device that guides individuals toward affectively safer spaces where temporary self-expression becomes possible. Rather than viewing culture as background context, we argue that values like hiya actively structure how minority stress is felt, negotiated, and relieved. By theorizing hiya-informed stress and adaptation, this study offers a culturally grounded extension of MST and calls for tourism research to reframe trans travel through a non-Western lens.