Limits and Risk in Solo Travel: Vulnerability, Gender, and Decision-Making

Solo travel has gained visibility in tourism and mobilities research, yet much of the literature continues to emphasize autonomy, freedom, and empowerment. More critical approaches suggest that such perspectives often overlook the constraints and limits that shape independent mobility. Traveling alone frequently involves heightened exposure to risk, uncertainty, and vulnerability, which are unevenly distributed across social groups and travel contexts. Gender plays a central role in structuring these experiences, as women and gender-diverse travelers commonly face increased safety concerns, moral regulation, and restricted access to certain spaces. These conditions shape decision-making processes and delimit where, how, and under what conditions solo travel becomes possible. Despite growing awareness of these issues, limits and risk are still often treated as secondary dimensions. This Research Topic positions them as core elements for understanding solo travel as a socially and spatially constrained form of mobility.

The goal of this Research Topic is to critically examine how limits and risks shape solo travel, with particular attention to vulnerability, decision-making under uncertainty, and gendered experiences of independent mobility. While solo travel is often portrayed as a form of autonomy and empowerment, such narratives tend to obscure the constraints imposed by safety concerns, social norms, destination contexts, and unequal power relations. This Research Topic foregrounds risk and limits as central analytical categories, exploring how solo travelers navigate physical, emotional, social, and digital risks within bounded conditions. Gender is a key dimension of this analysis, as women and gender-diverse travelers often face heightened exposure to danger, moral scrutiny, and spatial restrictions that influence their travel-related decisions. By shifting attention away from idealized representations toward lived constraints, this Research Topic aims to advance critical and inclusive theoretical perspectives and to inform policy, destination management, and safety-oriented interventions in tourism and mobility contexts.

We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives from tourism studies, sociology, psychology, geography, anthropology, and related fields. Both conceptual and empirical studies are encouraged, using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. By bringing together diverse approaches, this Research Topic seeks to deepen understanding of solo travel as a complex and constrained social practice and to provide insights relevant for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers interested in safer, more inclusive, and responsible travel experiences. Specific themes include (but are not limited to):

- Risk perception, assessment, and management in solo travel
- Physical, emotional, social, and digital vulnerability
- Gendered and intersectional dimensions of risk and safety
- Spatial constraints, restricted access, and boundary-making
- Decision-making under uncertainty and perceived danger
- Moral regulation, surveillance, and social control of solo travelers
- Fear, anxiety, and uncertainty as structuring elements of mobility
- Digital technologies, safety tools, and emerging forms of risk
- Geopolitical, cultural, and destination-specific risk contexts
- Solo travel in crisis situations (health, political, environmental)
- Ethical challenges in risk communication and destination governance
- Inequality, power relations, and exclusion in independent mobility

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Solo travel, Risk, Vulnerability, Gendered mobility, Travel limits, Safety, Security, Decision-making under uncertainty, Independent mobility

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.