Revisiting the influence of emotion on tourism advertising effectiveness using psychophysiological methods

This study aims to investigate the influence of both higher-order and lower-order emotional responses evoked by destination advertisements on three variables of major interest in tourism advertising: attitude towards the advertisement (Aad), post-exposure destination attitude (Adp) and visitation intention (VI). Lower-order emotions are defined as immediate, unprocessed affective reactions to an external stimulus and higher-order emotions are affective reactions that have been processed and evaluated cognitively. In this study, lower-order emotional responses will be measured using psycho-physiological techniques (i.e., facial EMG and skin conductance) and higher-order emotional responses will be measured using a self-report questionnaire (with both verbal and visual self-report scales). This study will contribute to both tourism and advertising bodies of knowledge by comparing lower-order emotions with higher-order emotions in terms of their ability to predict attitude towards the advertisement, post-exposure destination attitude and visitation intention

Current and potential methods for measuring emotion in tourism experiences: a review

This study provides an assessment of methods used in existing tourism research to measure emotion and discusses the potential for use of psychophysiological methods such as electro-dermal analysis, facial muscle activity, heart rate response, eye-tracking system and vascular measures. Psychophysiological measurement techniques have been reported in the marketing, advertising and media literature; however, to the best knowledge of the authors, no studies are reported in the tourism literature. Instead, studies of emotion in the tourism literature invariably employ self-report questionnaire methods which capture only tourists' high-order emotions and are subject to a variety of forms of bias. Unconscious emotional responses that can provide unbiased portrayal of individuals' initial emotional reactions when exposed to a stimulus have been largely ignored. The paper concludes that studies combining both self-report and psychophysiological measures are needed and areas for future research are discussed

A comparative analysis of self-report and psychophysiological measures of emotion in the context of tourism advertising

This study investigates the influence of emotional responses evoked by destination television advertisements on three common variables of interest when assessing tourism advertising effectiveness: attitude toward the advertisement, postexposure destination attitude and visit intention. In particular, this study used a combination of self-report and psychophysiological measures of emotion and explored the consistency between these two measurement techniques. A total of 101 participants were exposed to 18 existing destination commercials while their real-time psychophysiological responses and self-report data were collected. The results show that the influence of ad-evoked emotions on tourism advertising effectiveness varied according to the way emotion was measured. The effects of pleasure on tourism advertising effectiveness were much weaker when pleasure was measured physiologically than when self-report measures were used. Physiological arousal, however, was not found to be a significant indicator of advertising effectiveness. The results highlight the importance of valid and reliable measurement of emotion and raise concern over the possible overestimation of the relationship between self-reported emotional responses and advertising effectiveness

Worry and anger from flight delay: antecedents and consequences

Tourists may experience the same negative event during their travel but evoke different emotions, some may express anger, and others undertake dangerous actions. An understanding of the relationship between such negative events, the emotions elicited, and tourists' subsequent actions will help in managing these emotional situations. This study adopts cognitive appraisal theory to examine the antecedents of tourists' negative emotions (worry and anger) evoked by a flight delay and their respective effects on tourists' behavioural intentions. Data were collected from 610 tourists who experienced a flight delay during travel. The results demonstrate that, as predicted by cognitive appraisal theory, the appraisal dimensions of goal incongruence, certainty, and other agency are the common determinants of worry and anger, whereas the appraisal of circumstance agency is negatively related with anger. The results also reveal that anger can lead to tourists' switching intentions, complaining behaviours, and negative word-of-mouth, whereas worry only affects complaining behaviours. This study extends our knowledge of appraisal dimensions that lead to tourists' emotions of worry and anger. It also discusses the impacts of such emotions have on tourists' behavioural intentions

Alcohol warning label awareness and attention : A multi-method study

Aims Evaluation of alcohol warning labels requires careful consideration ensuring that research captures more than awareness given that labels may not be prominent enough to attract attention. This study investigates attention of current in market alcohol warning labels and examines whether attention can be enhanced through theoretically informed design. Attention scores obtained through self-report methods are compared to objective measures (eye-tracking). Methods A multi-method experimental design was used delivering four conditions, namely control, colour, size and colour and size. The first study (n = 559) involved a self-report survey to measure attention. The second study (n = 87) utilized eye-tracking to measure fixation count and duration and time to first fixation. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was utilized. Results Eye-tracking identified that 60% of participants looked at the current in market alcohol warning label while 81% looked at the optimized design (larger and red). In line with observed attention self-reported attention increased for the optimized design. Conclusions The current study casts doubt on dominant practices (largely self-report), which have been used to evaluate alcohol warning labels. Awareness cannot be used to assess warning label effectiveness in isolation in cases where attention does not occur 100% of the time. Mixed methods permit objective data collection methodologies to be triangulated with surveys to assess warning label effectiveness. Short summary Attention should be incorporated as a measure in warning label effectiveness evaluations. Colour and size changes to the existing Australian warning labels aided by theoretically informed design increased attention