From sad to happy to happier: Emotion regulation strategies used during a vacation

Emotion regulation is a psychological intervention tourists use to maximize the positive outcomes of their travel experiences. Tourists either down-regulate negative emotions (e.g., from sad to happy) or up-regulate positive emotions (e.g., from happy to happier). The construct of emotion regulation was used as a guiding framework to uncover which emotion regulation strategies tourists used during their vacations. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Study findings revealed tourists used three phases of emotion regulation strategies—interpersonal, situational, and intrapersonal—during their vacations. These findings not only contribute to tourism research by documenting the transient, dynamic and variable nature of emotions, but also provide a glimpse into how tourism and hospitality professionals should modify programs/experiences in response to tourists' emotions.     

Fear and adventure tourism in Brazil

The search for new non-routine emotions and sensations has become a decisive factor in taking part in adventure tourism. As Barros and Dines (2000) have pointed out, Brazil's natural resources are abundant and have been widely used to promote the nation's tourism. Empirical literature describes fear as one of the main emotions in adventure activities, and for this reason a questionnaire was designed to examine the presence of fear before and after three adventure activities (parachuting, white-water rafting, and rock-climbing). This study not only aimed to consolidate fear as a fundamental emotion in performing such activities but also to stimulate interest for further studies in this area.     

Facial expressions versus words: Unlocking complex emotional responses of residents toward tourists

Tourism as an emotional sphere, researchers' efforts on emotions lag behind the fruitful achievements of psychology, in both methods and theories. Tourism studies on emotion mostly rely on self-reports only, thus limiting the understanding to explicitly expressed emotions. This study aims to compare residents' emotional responses toward tourists expressed implicitly (through facial expressions) and explicitly (through self-reports), and interpret identified discrepancies by exploring the psychological mechanism behind the two expression channels. Using self-developed video vignettes as triggers, Hong Kong residents’ facial expressions during watching and self-reported emotions after watching the videos were recorded. Through a comprehensive comparison, desires-derived and stereotypes-elicited emotional responses of residents toward tourists were distinguished. Facial expressions conveyed more desires-derived emotions like happiness, sadness, and anger, whereas self-reports emphasized stereotypes-elicited emotions, particularly disgust. A dual-process model of emotion formation was proposed to interpret the emotional expressive discrepancies, thereby enhancing the theorization of tourism studies on emotion.     

Tourism Studies in Spain

ABSTRACT

This paper's aim is to reflect on the contribution of Sociology to our knowledge of tourism, just when the tourism industry is demanding professionals with a wider knowledge and understanding of tourism, and European universities are redefining their programmes. Half of the Spanish universities offering a degree in Tourism Studies include Sociology of Tourism in its programme. A comparative analysis of the syllabi shows how their content covers the main issue areas in this field. More emphasis has been placed on typologies of tourists and the impact of tourism, while the tourists' social behaviour and the tourist system as a social structure are largely ignored.     

Dialectical emotions in a dark heritage site: A study at the Auschwitz Death Camp

This study was designed to explore the emotional experience during the visit to the Auschwitz Death Camp, and its relationship to the perceptions of benefits gained from the visit as well as the quality of the experience. A mix method approach was adopted. Following a qualitative study, questionnaires (n = 553) were distributed in four languages. The findings which are based on the PANAS index revealed an emotional duality. The study highlights the central role of the negative emotions and the significant contribution of these emotions to visitor's satisfaction, as well as to the perceived benefits derived from the visit. The study challenges the emphasis of tourism research on positive emotions and its view of negative emotions as having a negative impact, leading to dissatisfaction with the visitor experience. The findings emphasize the need to conceptualize the visitor experience and address the positive contribution of negative emotions.     

Novelty: A mechanism of tourists’ enjoyment

Novelty, conceptualized as the experience of something new and different from the everyday, is widely believed to be what defines tourism experiences and makes them enjoyable. The present study tests the mediating effect of novelty on positive emotions in two longitudinal data sets based on daily psychometric diaries. Findings show that the effect of tourism experience on positive emotions is indeed partly mediated by novelty. The mediation effect is similar for average positive emotions as well as for the emotion of interest, suggesting that novelty sparks positive emotions through goal congruence more than by directly triggering interest. Findings affirm that novelty is indeed fundamental and enjoyable in the tourism experience.     

Tourism impacts,emotions and stress

Emotions and stress play an important role in individuals' quality of life and lived experience. Tourism can have a significant impact on the emotions and stress experienced by host community residents. In this study, the interrelationships between perceived tourism impacts, emotions from tourism, and tourism related stress were examined. Two mediated models were tested to examine the interdependence of stress and emotions. Several perceived tourism impacts predicted the experience of emotions from tourism and tourism related stress, while emotions and stress partially mediated relationships in both models. Host communities need to consider psychological outcomes such as emotions and stress when planning for the development of tourism.     

Visualizing theme park visitors’ emotions using social media analytics and geospatial analytics

Despite the popular use of social media analytics to scrutinize customer emotions, less scholarly efforts have been invested in visualizing theme park visitors' emotions. Employing the convergence of social media analytics and geospatial analytics, this paper visualized cohesive places where Disneyland visitors express distinct types of emotion in social media messages. Among 226,946 collected tweets, this study used 19,809 tweets containing one or more emotion words listed in Russell's Circumplex Model of Affect. Text mining analysis and GIS-based exploratory spatial data analysis showed that tweets reflecting each quadrant of emotions have considerable spatial variations and different topics related to visitor emotions. The research approach enabled displaying particular spots in theme park zones and areas of riding attractions where emotions of each quadrant are significantly clustered. This study highlights methodological implications of visualizing spatial patterns of visitors' emotions and provides practitioners with a useful guide to develop routes evoking pleasant emotions.     

Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Alpine Tourism

ABSTRACT

The paper addresses the need for more research in the field of entrepreneurial education in tourism, using the models of Butler's destination life cycle and Porter's diamond of competitive advantages. Following is a discussion of entrepreneurship in tourism in light of these analytical frameworks. As a consequence, key qualification and skill areas for tourism entrepreneurs are derived. Finally, the authors provide an overview of the main institutions that offer education in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland with a focus on entrepreneurship in tourism and establish critical needs for tourism entrepreneurship curricula and research.     

Attribution theory and negative emotions in tourism experiences

Existing tourist emotion studies are biased toward examining tourists' positive emotions due to their positive influence on a range of post-consumption behaviors. Tourists' negative emotions have potentially a stronger influence on future behaviors, with a significant omission being how tourists explain their own and others' behavior. Using attribution theory and the psychological constructivist view of emotions, we evaluate the relationship between nine main categories of tourists' negative emotions identified in travelogues (disgust, distress, anger, fear, sadness, regret, shame, boredom, and shock) and their attributions (locus of control and stability). By analyzing 298 travelogues via an a priori approach, and using correspondence analysis, the results show that feelings of shame are attributed to self-control while feelings of distress, regret, and sadness are attributed to the behavior of other tourists. Negative emotions such as anger and disgust are attributed to stability while the negative emotion of shock is ascribed to instability. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided.     

Customer delight from theme park experiences: The Antecedents of Delight based on Cognitive Appraisal Theory

This study empirically tests the ability of cognitive appraisal theory (CAT) to explain the antecedents of emotions from tourism experiences. Delight, an emotion related to hedonic consumption and characterized as aroused positive affect is the particular emotion selected for this study. Data was collected from 645 tourists leaving a theme park and analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results identify a set of appraisal dimensions that are antecedents of delight. Different evaluations on these dimensions provide multiple paths eliciting delight. This contrasts with previous research which has only noted one path involving surprise. The results allow concepts, such as magic joy, and real joy, to be parsimoniously explained. These findings are useful in designing tourism experiences.     

How to win the consumer’s heart? Exploring appraisal determinants of consumer pre-consumption emotions

Emotions are key drivers of consumption in the tourism and hospitality sector. Therefore, advancing our understanding of the determinants of consumer emotions is critical for tourism and hospitality marketers to effectively influence consumer affect-driven consumption behavior. However, research on the determinants of pre-consumption emotions remains under-explored. This study aims to fill the research gap and proposes a theoretical framework to explain affect-driven behavior. Grounded on the cognitive appraisal theory of emotions, we hypothesize that marketing stimuli are personally appraised based on several dimensions such as novelty and goal relevance. These appraisal dimensions determine the elicitation of positive emotions, leading to behavioral intentions. A total of 655 participants were recruited for an empirical study to test this framework in the context of a tourism event experience. We use an experimental research design to examine consumer appraisals, emotions and behavioral intentions in four conditions: two marketing visual formats (poster vs. video) over two delivery channels (advertising vs. e-word-of-mouth). Research outcomes support the theoretical framework of consumer affect-driven behavior, suggesting that the elicitation of positive emotions beneficially guides consumer behavior in goal striving and novelty seeking. Based on this, emotion-focused marketing implications are recommended, including goal-based segmentation, goal-relevant content development and the use of eWOM as an emotion-enhancing message delivery channel.     

Affordances for tourism service design

This paper argues that the concept of affordance, which captures the relations between one's abilities and the properties of one's environment, can help in aligning the elements of a tourism service with intended service experiences. We start with a general review of its conceptual basis in ecological psychology and design research, and then elaborate on the concept's potential applications in the context of tourism service design. The application of an affordance-centred framework is illustrated through a case study which examined a group of tourists with and without visual impairment on a holiday to an international destination. Finally, we offer four propositions to guide the use of the affordance concept in tourism service design.     

Motivation,emotion and world heritage status in discerning the heritage tourists: A segmentation perspective

Heritage tourists' motives are heterogeneous but few studies examine the relationship between these motives, emotions felt after the visit, and tourists' perceptions of the attributes that contribute to World Heritage Status (WHS) listing of a site. Using cognitive appraisal theory (CAT) as the theoretical lens, we evaluate the relationship between motivation, emotion and site characteristics. Based on a sample of 1531 international visitors to Petra, we segment their motives and emotions and profile these with respect to perceptions of the attributes for WHS listing. The results show the existence of two motivation clusters “General Tourists” and “Heritage Tourists”, with the latter being drawn to Petra for reasons related to both site characteristics and heritage. Three clusters of emotions were identified namely, “Positive Arousals”, “Low Arousals” and “Mixed Arousals”. Significant relationships were identified between the motivation and emotion clusters and their respective perceptions of the attributes for WHS listing. A logit model confirmed that the emotion felt by the different clusters can be predicted by motivation clusters, demographic and travel characteristics. Implications for theory and practice are offered.     

Tourists' perception of time: Directions for design

How tourists perceive, use and respond to time in their holiday experiences provide opportunities for recasting the design of many situations. Drawing on work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, this review paper considers ideas about the perception of time and temporal features of tourists' social episodes. Specific studies are outlined that document tourists' use of time and the management of time. Key links between time, emotion and other triggers to recall are considered. Six principles for furthering the consideration of time in the better design of contemporary tourism experiences are then articulated. The defining principles are Specifying duration, Managing and filling downtime, Preparing for emergencies, Tailoring tourist sequences, Encouraging engagement, and Implicating time in memorability.     

Service encounter failure,negative destination emotion and behavioral intention: An experimental study of taxi service

The relationship between transportation and tourism has not been fully explored in tourist research. The effects of transportation services at destinations, particularly with service encounter failures, on tourists' perceptions of the destinations and their behavioral intentions have not been considered. We examine taxis, a main form of tourist transportation, and assess how tourists evaluate the service encounter failures. Our sample of 308 residents in Hong Kong participated in an online experiment with a 2 × 2 between-subject experimental design. The results indicated that both dishonesty and inhospitality were regarded as attributes of taxi service failures and can contribute to tourists' negative emotions regarding destinations. The negative emotions were found to be a strong predictor of tourists' negative behavioral intentions, including their intentions to post negative online reviews and not to revisit. The implications are also discussed about managing transportation services such as taxis for destination marketing and management.     

Festival visiting,voluntary risk and positive health

Many disciplines including geography, tourism and event management, anthropology, sociology, psychology, public health and medicine have a contribution to make to the study of festivals. Despite a growing body of tourism and event literature outlining the many motivations for and subjective benefits of attending festivals, the reporting of positive health outcomes remains underdeveloped. Researching festival visitors who take risks for pleasure (voluntary risk-taking or ‘edgework’), would make an important and illuminating contribution to the literature and could offer alternative and broader perspectives on what we define as ‘health’. Interdisciplinary research collaborations using universally accepted definitions, methodologies and measures offer great potential to further our understanding of positive health and voluntary risk-taking from the perspective of the festival visitor.     

Exploring user acceptance of 3D virtual worlds in travel and tourism marketing

The virtual world of Second Life provides opportunities for companies in communicating marketing messages to targeted markets and capturing the attention of potential customers. Second Life has also been used by the travel and tourism industry as a collaborative and commercial tool for communicating with travelers in marketing tourism destinations (e.g. Tourism Ireland) as well as business management (e.g. Starwood Hotels; Crowne Plaza; STA travel agents). However, few studies have applied formal theory to understand the significance of virtual worlds to tourism destination marketing. The purpose of our study was to develop a research framework identifying the factors that affect tourists' experience and behavioral intentions within a 3D tourism destination by examining the applicability of the Technology Acceptance Model and Hedonic Theory. From a theoretical point of view, this study provides a research framework to capture the entertainment nature of virtual worlds and to reflect the concept that people in these worlds are technology users as well as potential consumers; it does so by extending the Technology Acceptance Model to incorporate the hedonic elements of enjoyment, emotional involvement, positive emotions, and flow experience for understanding the use of 3D virtual worlds within the context of travel and tourism. For destination managers, this study could help in designing engaging and interactive 3D tourism destination sites that contribute to an increase in people's interests in visiting the tourism destination in the future.     

Building composite indicators in tourism studies: Measurements and applications in tourism destination competitiveness

Composite indicators are useful tools to synthesize and monitor multidimensional phenomena. The aim of this paper is twofold: to offer the methodological foundations to build composite indicators in tourism and to evaluate a set of currently available composite indicators. Tourism destination competitiveness indicators constitute the object of this contribution. Their definitions, concepts and measures are analyzed and their evaluation is performed through the application of an original protocol. The results highlight that several methodological issues still surround the measurement of destinations competitiveness indicators. This paper provides tourism scholars and practitioners with a set of statistical guidelines to build composite indicators and with an operative scheme to assess indicators' effectiveness in empirical evaluations.     

Incorporating emotion into social exchange: considering distinct resident groups’ attitudes towards ethnic neighborhood tourism in Osaka,Japan

While numerous studies have utilized SET to examine the residents’ attitudes towards tourism, relatively scant from the literature is a discussion regarding the influence of emotion generated through SET among residents on their attitudes towards tourism. In addition, past studies mainly explored the social exchange between visitors and locals, while neglecting the social exchange within a local community. The goal of this study is to examine the influence individuals’ emotions toward their ethnic counterparts within a community can have on residents’ (i.e., members of the dominant ethnic group—Japanese and members of the ethnic minority group—Koreans) attitudes toward ethnic neighborhood tourism within the Korean neighborhood of Ikuno, Osaka, Japan. Ikuno has the highest concentration of Korean residents in Japan, and the town has become a destination of cultural tourism centered on Korean culture. Analysis of 640 completed questionnaires revealed while attitudes of Korean residents, who are more likely to perceive economic benefits from tourism have more favorable attitudes towards tourism, Japanese residents form their particular attitudes towards tourism based on the emotional solidarity they experience with their Korean neighbors. These findings indicate both utility of economic approach of social exchange theory and significant role of emotion in social exchange.