Problematic applications of Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) in tourism and hospitality research

Abstract

The purpose of this note is to improve the application of Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) in tourism and hospitality research by evaluating current applications. The field has rapidly adopted NCA for identifying necessary conditions in causal structures. An analysis of the 25 articles that use this emerging method reveals that most articles are problematic because they misinterpret NCA’s necessity logic or do not recognize the difference between NCA’s and fsQCA’s necessity analyses. This situation can be easily revised by following published standards of good practice of conducting NCA.