Tourism Marketing Stimulus Characteristics: A Self-Validation Analysis of Iran

Abstract

Prior self-validation hypothesis studies suggest that an individual’s attitude toward advertising is affected by the cognitive processing of the message and the valence of emotion. Yet, the effect of emotional arousal and stimulus credibility on attitudes toward a destination has not been discerned. This study employs the self-validation hypothesis to investigate the effect of the three dimensions of thinking on attitudes toward Iran. Participants (N = 416) were randomly assigned to a two (high vs. low arousal) × two (high vs. low source credibility) experiment. The partial least squares multigroup analysis results indicated that the emotionally arousing stimulus led to a greater influence of the amount and confidence of thought on attitudes. The effect of the amount of thought on attitude was greater in response to a credible stimulus. This research advances knowledge by revealing that emotional arousal has a significant positive impact on three dimensions of thinking and positive attitudes.

Keywords

emotion source credibility attitude self-validation analysis partial least squares (PLS)destination marketing

Introduction

Advertising is critical to destination marketing and aims to promote a positive destination image that results in a desire to visit (MacKay and Smith 2006). Tourism advertising contains messages about a destination, which provides visitors with information about the place and simplifies the purchase decision (Sharifpour et al. 2014). For marketers, the primary goal of tourism advertisement is to generate awareness among a target market and positively influence their attitudes and intention to visit by promoting the competitive advantages of the destination (McWilliams and Crompton 1997). The content of advertisement should also aim to reduce the uncertainty and risk associated with destination selection as advertising messages construct images in the minds of consumers of what they can expect from a destination experience (Fuchs and Reichel 2011). This is especially true for destinations that are perceived as risky and reduce a tourist’s desire to travel to the destination (Reisinger and Mavondo 2005); one such example is Iran. In this regard, the design or characteristics of tourism advertising exert a significant impact on potential tourists’ attitudes toward, and associations with, the destination (Amar, Droulers, and Legohérel 2017).

Social psychologists argue that the characteristics of a message affect three dimensions of thinking, that is, the amount of thought, valence of thinking, and thought confidence. These dimensions shape a consumer’s attitude toward an object (such as a tourism destination) (Briñol, Petty, and Barden 2007; Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2006). The first two primary aspects of thinking—the amount of thinking and the valence of thought—are described in contemporary theories of attitude, notably the elaboration likelihood model and heuristic-systematic model (Petty, Briñol and Tormala 2002). Prior tourism research in the domain of visitor attitude has applied the first two dimensions of thinking, amount and valence of thinking (as described in the elaboration likelihood and heuristic systematic models) (e.g., Tang, Jang, and Morrison 2012; Sparks, Perkins, and Buckley 2013). Researchers added a third dimension of thought, thought confidence, to the two primary aspects of thinking in a theoretical framework known as the self-validation hypothesis (Briñol, Petty, and Rucker 2006). Yet, thought confidence (i.e., your confidence in your thoughts when thinking about a destination) is understudied in tourism but could have a significant influence on attitude formation and, ultimately, the decision to visit the destination. This research applies the self-validation hypothesis as its theoretical foundation.

Prior studies of the self-validation hypothesis have explored the effect of the cognitive features of a message on thinking and attitude. These cognitive message features include factors such as source majority/minority status and group entitativity (Horcajo, Petty, and Briñol 2010; Clark and Thiem 2015). However, the role of the affective characteristics of stimuli, and specifically emotional arousal, in explaining three dimensions of thoughts and attitudes are not well discussed in the self-validation hypothesis literature. Further, the impact of source credibility on all dimensions of thinking and attitude is yet to be discerned in tourism destination marketing research. Accordingly, this research employs experimental design, manipulating the emotional arousal and source credibility of Iranian tourism videos, to explore the effect of thought confidence, valence, and amount of thought on attitudes toward the destination (Iran). The current research presents theoretical advancement of the self-validation hypothesis, as the impact of emotional arousal on the interaction between the three dimensions of thinking and attitude has not been explored previously. In addition, this research contributes to tourism literature by confirming the impact of source credibility on the relationship between the three dimensions of thinking and attitude. The findings will assist the managers of risk-related destinations (including those with political instability) to design effective marketing stimuli. A conceptual framework of this research is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

The conceptual framework for this study.

Theoretical Approaches to Attitudes

Attitude is defined as an individual’s favorable or unfavorable evaluation of an object (Newhouse 1990). Researchers often study attitude because it is thought to play a critical role in influencing decision making (Ayeh, Au, and Law 2013). There is a long history of attitudinal research in tourism. One of the most prominent attitudinal theories employed in tourism is the theory of planned behavior. This theory proposes that attitude, social norms, and perceived control are the main factors that influence intention to visit a destination (Chao 2012; Guan et al. 2016; J. Wang and Ritchie 2012). Thus, the theory of planned behavior concentrates on conditions that can activate or modify attitude (Hsu, Cai, and Li 2010). However, this theory has been criticized for assuming human decision making is a rational and cognitive procedure (Bagozzi, Gurhan-Canli, and Priester 2002; Smallman and Moore 2010) and neglects the affective and metacognitive aspects involved in the tourist decision-making process (McCabe, Li, and Chen 2016). Scholars (e.g., Wang 2016; Gao, Mattila, and Lee 2016) have therefore called for the evaluation of alternative theories of attitude and suggested that employing theories in the foundation disciplines, such as social psychology, is needed to enhance the body of knowledge on attitudinal research in tourism (Hadinejad et al. 2019).

Research on attitude in social psychology has evolved over the years. Previous research in the domain of attitude has described thinking that impacts on attitude formation (Petty, Briñol, and Tormala 2002). An individual is required to think about an object (generate thoughts) prior to forming an attitude toward it. Thus, influencing thoughts is believed to affect attitude (Petty and Briñol 2008). One dimension of thinking is the valence of thought, which can be positively or negatively orientated. Therefore, influencing the valence of thought is a key component in the process of persuasion, as presented in cognitive response theory (Greenwald 1968). Central to this theory is that persuasion occurs when a person generates favorable thoughts in response to a persuasive message.

The amount of thought is another dimension of thinking with the potential to influence attitude, as highlighted in the elaboration likelihood model and heuristic-systematic model (Dillard et al. 2002). In other words, the extent to which an individual cognitively responds to a message or elaborates on that information has a positive impact on attitude. Social psychology researchers have further developed these theories and proposed the self-validation hypothesis. The self-validation hypothesis adds a metacognitive dimension to thinking, namely, thought confidence, which can affect attitude (Briñol, Petty, and Tormala 2004). The self-validation hypothesis combines three dimensions of thinking as drivers of attitude with an emphasis on the role of thought confidence, which can range from extreme confidence to extreme doubt (Briñol and Petty 2009). Thought confidence refers to “a sense of conviction or validity regarding one’s thoughts” (Petty, Briñol, and Tormala 2002, p. 724). The key notion of the self-validation hypothesis is that generating thoughts is not enough to influence attitudes, rather people also consider confidence in their thoughts when developing an attitude toward an object (Tormala, Petty, and Briñol 2002). The amount and valence of thinking are regarded as the cognitive aspects of thinking in the self-validation hypothesis, while thought confidence is considered as the metacognitive dimension. The self-validation hypothesis is called a metacognitive process or perspective in the prior social psychology literature (e.g., Petty and Briñol 2008).

While a number of variables have been examined in the self-validation hypothesis literature, scholars have called for the investigation of other possible factors affecting attitude (Briñol and Petty 2015; Clark et al. 2013). In addition, the role of emotion, and specifically emotional arousal, the level of activation of an emotion (Hadinejad et al. 2019), on attitude is underresearched in the self-validation hypothesis literature. Furthermore, there is insufficient evidence of a self-validation analysis of the effect of source credibility on the three dimensions of thinking and attitude in fields other than psychology (Clark and Evans 2014) and is yet to be addressed in tourism. Accordingly, this research investigates the impact of all dimensions of thinking on attitude when emotional arousal and source credibility of the stimulus are manipulated.

The Effect of Emotion and Source Credibility on Cognition, Metacognition, and Subsequent Attitude

Emotion as an evaluative construct can affect individuals’ attitudinal judgments (Hosany and Prayag 2013). Emotional responses evoked by an advertisement are predictors of positive attitudes and intention to purchase (Niazi, Ghani, and Aziz 2012). In a tourism context, emotions in response to advertisements have been shown to induce positive attitudes toward marketing content and influence the intention to visit a destination (Li et al. 2018; Wang, Kirillova, and Lehto 2017). Drawing upon dimensional approaches to emotion such as pleasure-arousal-dominance, researchers have shown that stimuli induced emotions have a tendency to impact on attitudes toward and engagement with advertisements (Li et al. 2018; Teixeira, Wedel, and Pieters 2012). Tourism scholars have also found that emotions evoked by marketing stimuli influence vacation choice and mental images of a destination (Kim, Kim, and Bolls 2014; Walters, Sparks, and Herington 2012). Similarly, the valence of emotions has been indicated to affect attitude formation (Goossens 2000). Prior research on the effect of emotion on attitude provided useful findings; however, most of the studies explored this relationship from a cognitive perspective.

Emotions affect attitudes by affecting an individual’s thoughts and beliefs (Edell and Burke 1987). Emotional responses influence the amount of thought individuals generate and, subsequently, impact on their attitudes toward a message (Moore and Harris 1996; Wyland and Forgas 2007). Emotional states interfere with cognitive capacity and, therefore, have an impact on an individual’s attitude (Mackie and Worth 1989). Connected to this, the self-validation hypothesis researchers have articulated that message characteristics tend to influence individuals’ need for cognition (i.e., one’s effortful thinking) and subsequent attitudes (Briñol, Petty, and Tormala 2004). The emotive characteristics of a message can influence the amount of thought generated in response to a stimulus and the following attitudes. In this regard, the feeling-as-information framework (Chartrand, van Baaren, and Bargh 2006) suggests that emotional stimuli have a stronger effect on attitude by influencing cognitive effort compared to a nonemotional message.

According to the hedonic contingency view, emotions elicited in response to a message also tend to influence attitudes by affecting the valence of thought (Hirt, Devers, and McCrea 2008). In other words, individuals in a happy mood are sensitive to the hedonic implications of messages they encounter, and the valence of their thoughts influences their attitudes toward the source. Psychology studies of emotion have found that emotion can bias the direction of thinking (Petty, Fabrigar, and Wegener 2003). The influence of emotion on an individual’s thoughts about an object is especially affected when emotion manipulation happens before or during the message delivery. Thus, the individual’s emotional state has been shown to bias the thoughts that come to mind (Petty et al. 1993) and the positive or negative direction of thoughts, which subsequently influences their attitudes toward the object (Tiedens and Linton 2001; Wegener, Petty, and Smith 1995). To study the influence of emotion on thinking, the self-validation hypothesis researchers manipulated emotional responses after a thought listing task and found that the effect of the valence of thought on attitude might not be influenced by the emotional manipulation of message sources (Briñol, Petty, and Barden 2007).

Social psychologists have also argued that thought confidence is influenced by message characteristics, akin to the amount and valence of thinking (Tormala et al. 2006). Briñol, Petty, and Barden (2007) argued that the emotive features of a message have an impact on thought confidence. Emotional messages lead to higher confidence in thoughts and favorable attitudes compared with a non-emotional stimulus. Prior self-validation hypothesis literature has investigated the effect of the amount of thought, the valence of thinking, and thought confidence on attitude when the valence of emotions elicited by a message was manipulated. However, tourism scholars have noted that both dimensions of emotion, valence, and arousal, are positively related with attitudes toward a tourism marketing stimulus (Li et al. 2018). Accordingly, this research proposes the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1a: The effect of an individuals’ amount of thought on attitude is greater when participants watch a highly emotionally arousing video in comparison with a less emotionally arousing version of the video.

Hypothesis 1b: The impact of the valence of thought on attitude is greater when participants watch a highly emotionally arousing video compared to a less emotionally arousing video.

Hypothesis 1c: The influence of thought confidence on attitude is greater when participants watch a highly emotionally arousing video compared to a less emotionally arousing video.

The effect of source credibility, the perceived expertise, and trustworthiness of a message (Kelman and Hovland 1953) on attitude is widely established in the psychology and tourism literature. Credibility is a critical component of persuasive communication. Travel-related products involve risk due to the intangibility of tourism services (Loda, Teichmann, and Zins 2009). Therefore, tourists seek information as a risk reduction strategy, and the higher the credibility of sources, the lower the perceived risk. High credibility sources typically impact attitude more than low credible messages (Pornpitakpan 2004). Source credibility is a strong predictor of the type of information source used in the context of a travel information search, which can affect tourists’ overall attitudes and behavioral intentions toward a specific destination (Kerstetter and Cho 2004). The credibility of travel-related user-generated content also influences attitudes and travel planning process (Ayeh, Au, and Law 2013). Destination source credibility along with destination image affects perceptions of destination satisfaction (Veasna, Wu, and Huang 2013).

Gunn (1972), one of the first to discuss the credibility of persuasive communications, used the concept of induced and organic agents. While organic agents such as online reviews, word of mouth, and reports are based on general life experiences and are perceived to be highly credible, induced agents including promotional advertisements are provided by destination marketers and tend to convey low credibility (Moyle and Croy 2006; Dickinger 2011). Organic agents as highly credible sources have a stronger impact on the amount of thought an individual generates in response to a stimulus and subsequent attitudes as compared to information from a less credible source (Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2006). Source credibility may also affect the valence of an individual’s thoughts and attitudes (Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2007). Performing as a peripheral or heuristic cue, high credibility sources influence the effect of the valence of thought on attitude stronger than less credible messages (Briñol and Petty 2009). Source credibility impacts on attitude through its influence on thought confidence, leading individuals to rely on their thoughts generated in response to a message (Clark et al. 2013). Although prior self-validation hypothesis literature has explored the effect of source credibility on thinking and attitude, this relationship is under-researched in a tourism context. Hence, the following hypotheses are presented:

Hypothesis 2a: The impact of the amount of thought on attitude is stronger when participants watch a highly credible video compared to a less credible video.

Hypothesis 2b: The effect of the valence of thought on attitude is greater when participants watch a highly credible video in comparison with a video of less credibility.

Hypothesis 2c: The influence of thought confidence on attitude is greater when participants watch a highly credible video compared to a less credible video.

The following section explains how the stimuli for this study was developed. Message characteristics, that is, emotional arousal and source credibility manipulation, are also explained. In addition, data collection and analysis are detailed.

Methodology

Stimuli Development

To develop the required manipulation, the authors created a video of Iran as an advertising stimulus. This mock advertisement aimed to encourage travel to Iran. Developing a new stimulus would ensure that none of the participants had seen the video previously, and thus their prior knowledge about the destination advertisement did not influence their responses. The video presents the perspective of a female traveler in Iran and includes images of tourist attractions, nature, food, and the daily life of Iranians. The video starts with an aerial view as a plane lands in Iran and then the female tourist travels to different places and takes photos. The video, which is ninety seconds in length, ends with a blink of a Persian cat’s eye.

Manipulation

A two-group posttest-only randomized experiment was adopted (Hopp et al. 2005). Participants were assigned randomly to high versus low emotional arousal and source credibility conditions to avoid the effect of priming, where reactions are affected by experiencing an item more than once (Hauptmann and Karni 2002). In order to manipulate the emotionally arousing features of the video, the color and music within the videos for each condition were changed (Bonnardel, Piolat, and Le Bigot 2011; Gorn 1982; Aslam 2006; Zander 2006). Prior research has revealed that colorful imagery exerts a significant impact on consumer information processing (Lee et al. 2014). Connected to this, researchers have reported higher levels of pleasure and emotional arousal in response to color advertisements in comparison with monochrome versions (Detenber, Simons, and Reiss 2000). In the high emotional arousal condition, participants watched the color video with a light rhythmic music overlay. For the low emotional arousal condition, participants watched the same video in monochrome without sound. The authors manipulated the credibility of the video of the study and led the participants to believe that the stimulus was made by a “solo female traveler who visited Iran in 2017” as an organic agent (as per Moyle and Croy 2006) in the high source credibility. In the low source credibility condition, participants were told that the video was made by a “travel agency in Iran for promotional purposes” as an induced agent (as per Croy and Wheeler 2007). A pilot study was conducted to assess the manipulation.

Pilot Study

There were 43 Australian participants (26 females and 17 males) in the pilot study. The emotive features of the videos were pilot tested using FaceReader and skin conductance physiological measurement technologies. A self-report questionnaire and interviews were also conducted after participants watched the video to establish that the video with and without music did indeed discriminate between the emotional responses of viewers. The pilot study also included four questions on credibility, trustworthiness, honesty, and expertise to test the source credibility manipulation. Participants’ emotional responses were captured by FaceReader and skin conductance while watching the videos. After viewing the videos, participants completed the questionnaire and post hoc interviews to report their emotional arousal and perceived credibility of the sources. The total data collection procedure took 20–30 minutes per participant.

The findings from skin conductance (p < 0.05), FaceReader (p < 0.001), self-report surveys (p < 0.05), and interviews confirmed that the light rhythmic music evoked higher levels of emotional arousal compared to the video without music. The pilot study also indicated that participants rated the credibility of a “solo female traveler who visited Iran in 2017” as a creator of organic content significantly higher than a “travel agency in Iran for promotional purposes” as a creator of induced content, t(41) = −2.50, p < 0.05. Therefore, the results of the pilot test confirmed that the videos (i.e., the experimental stimulus material) for emotional arousal and perceived credibility were valid and appropriate for testing the hypotheses in the full study.

Data Collection

Four versions of the questionnaire were designed to cover the experimental conditions and participants were randomly assigned to each group. Data were collected from Australians, using the services of an online panel provider, and applying a national representative spread sampling approach (see Moyle et al. 2017). A total of 518 surveys were commenced, of which 74 surveys were incomplete and thus excluded from the analysis. The authors then checked if participants selected one response for all questions that led to the elimination of an additional 28 responses, resulting in 416 completed questionnaires. During data collection, screening questions were used to filter out those who did not hear the audio in the high emotional arousal condition. The questionnaire also included a question “Are you Australian by birth? If not, have you lived in Australia for at least 18 years?” as a screening question to exclude the non-Australian participants and those below 18 years old. Table 1 presents the demographic characteristics of the 416 participants.

Table 1.

Participants’ Demographic Information.

Characteristics	Frequency (% of the Sample)
Gender
Male	203 (49.0)
Female	213 (51.0)
Age (in years)
18-27	60 (14.4)
28-37	79 (19.0)
38-47	74 (17.8)
48-57	80 (19.2)
58+	121 (29.1)
I don’t want to respond	2 (0.5)
Education level
Primary education	7 (1.7)
Secondary education	116 (27.9)
Vocational (e.g. certificate/diploma)	124 (29.8)
University undergraduate	117 (28.2)
University postgraduate (master and doctorate)	51 (12.2)
I don’t want to respond	1 (0.2)
States
Australian Capital Territory	5 (1.2)
New South Wales	144 (34.6)
Queensland	86 (20.7)
South Australia	27 (6.5)
Tasmania	8 (2)
Victoria	110 (26.4)
Western Australia	36 (8.6)
Previous travel to the Middle East
Never visited	344 (83)
Visited at least once	72 (17)
Previous travel to Iran
Never visited	406 (97.5)
Visited at least once	10 (2.5)
Number of countries visited
0	61 (14.6)
1-5	180 (43.3)
6-10	86 (20.6)
10+	64 (15.4)
I don’t want to respond	25 (6.1)

Measurements

Amount of thought

Following the video, participants were provided with 10 blank boxes to list their thoughts about Iran based on the video. Participants were asked to write down a maximum of 10 thoughts (word phrases/sentences) that went through their mind in response to the advertising stimulus (number of thoughts ranging from zero to ten) (Briñol and Petty 2003; Tormala, Petty, and Briñol 2002; Briñol, Petty, and Barden 2007). Participants were advised not to worry about grammar or spelling (Clark and Thiem 2015).

Valence of thought

In order to measure the valence of thought, two judges unaware of the experimental designs coded the thoughts as favorable, unfavorable, and neutral (Briñol et al. 2007). Irrelevant thoughts were excluded from analysis. Judges agreed on 94% of the favorability of thoughts and any disagreement between the judges was resolved by discussion. To form an index of favorability, the number of unfavorable thoughts was subtracted from the number of favorable thoughts, and the difference was divided by the total number of thoughts (Petty, Briñol, and Tormala 2002). Therefore, the valence of thought ranged between −1 and +1. This approach has been frequently applied to measure the amount and valence of thinking (e.g., Petty, Briñol, and Tormala 2002; Briñol and Petty 2003; Horcajo, Petty, and Briñol 2010; Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2007).

Thought confidence

Participants were asked to think back to the listed thoughts and report the confidence they had in their thoughts on a five-point scale (anchored at “not at all” and “extremely”) (Horcajo, Petty, and Briñol 2010). Five semantically worded items were used to measure thought confidence. Example items were “Overall, how much ‘confidence’ do you have in the thoughts you listed (about Iran based on the video)?” and “Overall, how ‘valid’ would you say your thoughts are?.” The reliability of thought confidence scale has been confirmed in previous studies (Briñol, Petty, and Tormala 2004). In the current study, α = 0.84 which was above 0.7 (Pallant 2016) and confirmed the reliability of the thought confidence measurement.

Attitude

Participants were advised to rate attitude on a series of five-point semantic differential scales (unfavorable–favorable, negative–positive, bad–good, boring–interesting, nonattractive–attractive, unpleasant–pleasant, undesirable–desirable, and nonuseful–useful) (Briñol, Petty, and Tormala 2004). The items in the attitude scale demonstrated high internal consistency and reliability in prior research (Briñol, Petty, and Wagner 2009). The attitude scale in this study had good internal consistency with α = 0.95.

Data Analysis

Partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to assess the structural model in the conceptual framework and partial least squares multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) was applied for emotional arousal and source credibility group comparison (Sarstedt, Henseler, and Ringle 2011). While analysis of variance / multivariate analysis of variance allows a comparison in the variance of mean scores among different groups (Pallant 2016), multigroup analysis using PLS-SEM enables scholars to assess and compare moderation across multiple relationships simultaneously (Matthews 2017). Therefore, SmartPLS 3.0 software was used to evaluate the structural model and conduct the PLS-MGA (Ringle, Wende, and Becker 2015). For this study, PLS-SEM as a variance-based SEM method was more appropriate than common covariance-based approaches to SEM. Variance-based SEM is apt as it accommodates small samples inherent in experimental design, as well as single-item variables (Astrachan, Patel, and Wanzenried 2014; Li et al. 2018; Henseler, Ringle, and Sarstedt 2016).

This study employed a three-stage approach to evaluate the model across the high versus low emotional arousal and source credibility conditions: assessment of the measurement model; evaluation of the structural models; and finally, a multigroup analysis to test the study hypotheses. To assess the measurement model, convergent validity and collinearity were checked. Convergent validity was conducted to assess that each indicator contributed to the formative index (Rasoolimanesh et al. 2017). Collinearity of the latent variables with multiple indicators (thought confidence and attitude) was then checked to assess the correlation between measures of the same constructs (Westlund, Källström, and Parmler 2008). To evaluate the structural models in each of the emotional arousal and source credibility conditions, the path coefficients, R², and the values of standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), which represents the goodness of fit index for PLS-SEM were assessed (Henseler, Ringle, and Sarstedt 2016; Henseler, Hubona, and Ray 2016). In the final stage, PLS-MGA was employed to compare the structural models across the four conditions (Sarstedt, Henseler, and Ringle 2011).

Results

A manipulation check was also conducted in the main experiment. After watching the video, participants were asked to indicate their level of emotional arousal using the self-assessment manikin (Lang 1980). Participants showed that the video with the light rhythmic music elicited higher levels of emotional arousal compared to the video without music, t(414) = 3.93, p < 0.05. In addition, participants were required to rate the credibility, trustworthiness, honesty, and expertise of the source of the video. Ratings of the four scales were averaged to form an index of perceived credibility, consistent with the approach proposed by Clark and Evans (2014). The credibility of a “solo female traveler who visited Iran in 2017” was rated higher compared to a “travel agency in Iran for promotional purposes,” t(414) = 4.28, p < 0.05.

Data were checked for normality by inspecting skewness and kurtosis (Hair et al. 2010). As presented in Table 2, amount of thought in the low emotional arousal and valence of thought in the high source credibility condition were not normally distributed. However, PLS-SEM does not require data to be normally distributed (Hair et al. 2014), allowing data analysis to proceed with the raw data.

Table 2.

Data Normality Check.

Measures	N	Skewness Statistics (SD)	Kurtosis Statistics (SD)	Normal
High emotional arousal group
Amount of thought	188	−0.34 (0.18)	−1.58 (0.35)	✓
Valence of thought	188	−0.79 (0.18)	13.54 (0.36)	✓
Thought confidence	188	−0.04 (0.18)	−0.54 (0.35)	✓
Attitude	188	−0.23 (0.18)	0.01 (0.35)	✓
Low emotional arousal group
Amount of thought	228	1.44 (0.16)	2.04 (0.32)	✘
Valence of thought	228	−0.56 (0.16)	−0.46 (0.32)	✓
Thought confidence	228	−0.28 (0.16)	−0.13 (0.32)	✓
Attitude	228	−0.15 (0.16)	−0.61 (0.32)	✓
High source credibility group
Amount of thought	203	−0.07 (0.17)	−1.71 (0.34)	✓
Valence of thought	203	−1.32 (0.17)	1.01 (0.34)	✘
Thought confidence	203	−0.17 (0.17)	−0.30 (0.34)	✓
Attitude	203	−0.23 (0.17)	0.28 (0.34)	✓
Low source credibility group
Amount of thought	213	−0.71 (0.17)	0.07 (0.33)	✓
Valence of thought	213	−0.80 (0.17)	−0.23 (0.33)	✓
Thought confidence	213	−0.11 (0.17)	−0.29 (0.33)	✓
Attitude	213	−0.20 (0.17)	−0.42 (0.33)	✓

Table 3 shows the descriptive statistics of the amount of thought, valence of thinking, thought confidence, and attitude in the four experimental conditions. The mean score and standard deviation of the constructs in each experimental design are presented below.

Table 3.

Descriptive Statistics.

	High Emotional Arousal Group,Mean Score (SD)	Low Emotional Arousal Group,Mean Score (SD)	High Source Credibility Group,Mean Score (SD)	Low Source Credibility Group,Mean Score (SD)
Amount of thought	6.86 (3.07)	3.50 (2.19)	5.96 (3.52)	4.11 (2.33)
Valence of thought	0.76 (0.39)	0.21 (0.61)	0.52 (0.57)	0.39 (0.61)
Thought confidence	3.41 (0.88)	3.29 (0.91)	3.38 (0.86)	3.30 (0.93)
Attitude	3.31 (0.89)	2.98 (1.01)	3.18 (0.94)	3.07 (0.99)

Note: SD = Standard deviation.

Assessment of Measurement Model

According to Hair et al.’s (2014) guideline and previous research (e.g., Briñol, Petty, and Barden 2007; Clark and Thiem 2015), thought confidence and attitude are considered formative measurement models. Results indicated that the path coefficient of the two formative measurement models (thoughts confidence and attitude) were above the threshold of 0.8, thus providing support for the formative construct’s convergent validity (Hair et al. 2014). The results of collinearity revealed that the variance inflation factor (VIF) of the second indicator of attitude was higher than 5, and thus was removed from the model (Westlund, Källström, and Parmler 2008). After removing the second indicator of attitude, the VIF was below 5 for all indicators as presented in Table 4.

Table 4.

Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) Results.

Attitude		Thought Confidence
Indicators	VIF	Indicators	VIF
ATT1	4.110	Certain	2.832
ATT3	4.653	Confidence	1.926
ATT4	2.023	Similar	1.452
ATT5	2.870	Valid	2.845
ATT6	4.532
ATT7	4.527
ATT8	2.415

The outer weights of formative constructs (thought confidence and attitude) were also analyzed for their significance and relevance by performing a bootstrapping analysis (5,000 subsamples) (Henseler, Ringle, and Sarstedt 2016). According to Hair et al. (2014), if the outer weights are not significant, outer loadings should be assessed. Although the outer weight of six indicators, ATT3, ATT7, ATT8, Certain, Similar, and Valid, were found to be insignificant, the outer loading for all these formative indicators was above 0.6 and the p value was less than 0.05. Thus, the formative indicators were retained even though their outer weights were not significant (Hair et al. 2014). Further, prior research provides support for the relevance of these indicators for capturing attitude and thought confidence (Petty, Briñol, and Tormala 2002; Clark and Evans 2014).

Evaluation of the Structural Model

In the second stage of analysis, the structural models for the four experimental conditions were assessed based on the path coefficients, g and SRMR. A nonparametric bootstrapping analysis (5,000 subsamples) was conducted to analyze the significance of relationships in the structural model in each experimental condition (see Ringle, Wende, and Becker 2015). This is the standard approach to test the significance of PLS path modeling results (Henseler, Ringle, and Sinkovics 2009). The path coefficient results of each experimental condition are displayed in Table 5.

Table 5.

Significance Testing Results of the Structural Model Path Coefficient.

		Path Coefficient	t Value	p Value
High emotional arousal group(n =188)SRMR = 0.027	Amount of thought → Attitude	0.262	4.550	0.000**
	Valence of thought → Attitude	0.546	10.121	0.000**
	Thought confidence → Attitude	0.356	3.989	0.000**
Low emotional arousal group(n=228)SRMR = 0.023	Amount of thought → Attitude	0.089	1.308	0.192
	Valence of thought → Attitude	0.495	5.607	0.000**
	Thought confidence → Attitude	0.166	2.831	0.005**
High source credibility group(n=203)SRMR = 0.026	Amount of thought → Attitude	0.201	3.317	0.001**
	Valence of thought → Attitude	0.540	9.386	0.000**
	Thought confidence → Attitude	0.244	3.398	0.001**
Low source credibility group(n=213)SRMR = 0.023	Amount of thought → Attitude	0.033	0.423	0.673
	Valence of thought → Attitude	0.515	6.590	0.000**
	Thought confidence → Attitude	0.226	3.405	0.001**

Note: SRMR < 0.08.

Significant at p < 0.05.

In the high emotional arousal condition, the results indicated that thought confidence, valence, and amount of thought that participants generated significantly explained their attitude toward Iran (p = 0.00). In contrast, in the low emotional arousal condition, thought confidence and valence of thought are the key drivers for attitude (p = 0.00); however, the effect of the amount of thought on attitude was not significant (p = 0.19). In the high source credibility condition, participants’ attitude was significantly influenced by the amount and valence of thinking generated in response to the stimulus and their thought confidence (p = 0.00). The effect of thought confidence and valence of thought on attitude in the low source credibility condition was significant (p = 0.00), while the amount of thought did not significantly explain attitude (p = 0.67). Figure 2 displays the outcome of the structural model for each experimental condition and demonstrates the R² values.

Figure 2.

The path coefficient and R² results of the structural model in each experimental condition. **p < 0.05.

The R² value, which range from 0 to 1 with higher values indicating higher levels of predictive accuracy, was calculated to indicate the model’s explanatory power (Rasoolimanesh et al. 2017; Hair et al. 2014). The R² values above 0.2 were relatively high and were acceptable by behavioral research standards. Therefore, the R² values for high emotional arousal condition (0.449), low emotional arousal group (0.359), high source credibility design (0.462), and low source credibility cluster (0.356) were acceptable. Around 45% of the variance in attitude was explained by the amount of thought, valence of thought, and thought confidence in the high emotional arousal condition. Further, 36% of the variance in attitude results from the combined effect caused by the amount of thought, valence of thought, and thought confidence in the low emotional arousal condition. The results also show that 46% and 36% of the variance in attitude were explained by the amount of thought, valence of thought, and thought confidence in the high and low source credibility conditions, respectively.

The SRMR values explain how well the model structure fits the data (Henseler et al. 2016) and the study indicated that the SRMR values were 0.027, 0.023, 0.026, and 0.023 for high and low emotional arousal and high and low source credibility conditions, respectively. Therefore, all the SRMR values were lower than 0.08, which is an acceptable value of the model fit for PLS-SEM and confirms that the models were well specified.

PLS-MGA Results

In the third stage of analysis, the research hypotheses were tested. PLS-MGA was conducted to assess the differential effect of the amount of thought, valence of thought, and thought confidence on attitude across the four experimental conditions. This analysis was achieved by comparing the structural model path coefficients between research experimental conditions (Rwehumbiza 2017). The results for all of the relationships in the model (high vs. low emotional arousal and source credibility design) are presented in Table 6. A result is significant at the 5% probability of error level, if the p value is smaller than 0.05 or larger than 0.95 for a certain difference of group-specific path coefficients (Mugion et al. 2018; Rasoolimanesh et al. 2017).

Table 6.

PLS-MGA Results for High and Low Emotional Arousal and Source Credibility Conditions.

		High Emotional Arousal Group (n=188)			Low Emotional Arousal Group (n=228)			High vs. Low Emotional Arousal (PLS-MGA)
		Path Coefficients	t Value	p Value	Path Coefficients	t Value	p Value	Path Difference	p Value	Hypotheses Supported
Hypothesis 1a	Amount of thought → Attitude	0.262	4.550	0.000	0.089	1.308	0.192	0.082	0.974**	Yes
Hypothesis 1b	Valence of thought → Attitude	0.546	10.121	0.000	0.495	5.607	0.000	0.072	0.680	No
Hypothesis 1c	Thought confidence → Attitude	0.356	3.989	0.000	0.166	2.831	0.005	0.171	0.045**	Yes
		High Source Credibility Group (n=203)			Low Source Credibility Group (n=213)			High vs. Low Source Credibility (PLS-MGA)
		Path Coefficients	t Value	p Value	Path Coefficients	t Value	p Value	Path Difference	p Value	Hypotheses Supported
Hypothesis 2a	Amount of thought → Attitude	0.201	3.317	0.001	0.033	0.423	0.673	0.168	0.955**	Yes
Hypothesis 2b	Valence of thought → Attitude	0.540	9.386	0.000	0.515	6.590	0.000	0.025	0.599	No
Hypothesis 2c	Thought confidence → Attitude	0.244	3.398	0.001	0.226	3.405	0.001	0.017	0.432	No

p < 0.05 or p > 0.95.

Table 6 shows the results of PLS-MGA. Hypotheses 1a and 1c were supported, which show the effect of the amount of thought and thought confidence on attitude differ significantly across the emotional arousal experimental design. In other words, the amount of thought explains attitude greater when participants watch a highly emotionally arousing video compared to a less emotionally arousing stimulus (p = 0.97). However, hypothesis 1b was not supported, indicating the effect of the valence of thought on attitude in the high emotional arousal condition did not significantly differ from the less emotionally arousing design (p = 0.68). Further, the effect of thought confidence on attitude was significantly greater when participants were exposed to a highly emotionally arousing tourism stimulus in comparison with a less arousing video (p = 0.04).

Results from the source credibility manipulation revealed that only hypothesis 2a was supported, which indicates one relationship differs significantly across the two groups. In the high credibility source condition, the effect of the amount of thought on attitude was significantly stronger compared to the experimental design when participants watched the less credible video (p = 0.95). However, hypothesis 2b was not supported, showing that the effect of the valence of thought on attitude was quite similar across the high and low source credibility condition (p = 0.59). In addition, hypothesis 2c was not supported, revealing that the effect of thought confidence on attitude in a high source credibility design did not differ significantly from when participants were exposed to a less credible source (p = 0.43).

Discussion

Social psychologists assert that emotional responses to messages along with credible sources lead to cognitive and metacognitive engagement with the message and thus influences subsequent attitudes (Briñol, Petty, and Barden 2007; Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2006). Because of a lack of research on stimuli design in tourism and call for further investigation of the self-validation hypothesis (Decrop 2007; Briñol and Petty 2015), the current study explored the effect of the three dimensions of thinking on attitude when emotional arousal and the source credibility of tourism advertising stimulus were manipulated. In doing so, this research revealed that the emotionally arousing tourism video had a greater influence on positive attitudes toward a destination than a credible stimulus.

Emotional Arousal and Attitude

This research showed that emotional arousal affects individuals’ attitudes and revealed that when the tourism advertising stimulus of Iran evoked high levels of emotional arousal, the effect of the amount of thought on attitude was significantly greater compared to a less emotionally arousing video. This result supports previous findings that emotional responses to tourism stimuli can influence the participants’ amount of thought and subsequent attitude (Moore and Harris 1996; Wyland and Forgas 2007; Li et al. 2018; Yüksel and Akgül 2007). When individuals were exposed to the emotionally arousing tourism marketing content, their emotional states interfered with their cognitive efforts and subsequently had a positive impact on their attitude toward the stimulus (Mackie and Worth 1989). Further, the feeling-as-information framework and self-validation hypothesis studies highlight the importance of the emotive features of stimuli as emotional responses affect individuals’ cognitive engagement with the message and their attitude (Chartrand, van Baaren, and Bargh 2006; Briñol, Petty, and Tormala 2004). The finding of this research are in line with the associative network theories of memory, which asserts that emotions facilitate the retrieval of information (Blaney 1986; Bower 1981) as non-emotional messages do not exert a strong influence on attitude through determining information processing (Chartrand, van Baaren, and Bargh 2006; Moons and Mackie 2007). As a result, this study extends previous self-validation hypothesis studies by indicating that emotional arousal is also an important determinant of thought generation in response to a message and attitude formation. In both high and low emotional arousal experimental conditions, the effect of the valence of thought on attitude was similar. This finding extends the self-validation hypothesis literature through application to a tourism context, which suggests that the impact of the valence of thought on attitudes is not influenced by emotional arousal manipulation. This contrasts with other scholarly inquiry, such as the hedonic contingency framework, that asserts emotions evoked by marketing stimuli influence the valence of individuals’ thoughts and attitudinal judgments (Hirt, Devers, and McCrea 2008; Neelamegham and Jain 1999). One potential reason could be the limited explanatory power of the self-validation hypothesis in relation to perception bias and stereotypical images (Tasci, Gartner, and Cavusgil 2007). That is, if individuals have already formed perceptions about a country, their perception bias does not allow them to generate favorable thoughts in response to the new information they receive. In this case, Iran’s brand image could be biased or distorted given individuals’ perceptions. However, perception bias potentially caused participants to generate similar thoughts in response to both high and low emotionally arousing videos.

The results also highlight significant differences between the effects of thought confidence on attitude across emotional arousal groups. In other words, participants’ thought confidence influenced their attitudes toward Iran more when they watched a highly emotionally arousing tourism video. This finding was consistent with prior attitudinal research on the role of emotions in shaping an individual’s attitude (Yoo and MacInnis 2005; Niazi, Ghani, and Aziz 2012; S. Wang, Kirillova, and Lehto 2017; Walters, Sparks, and Herington 2012; Hosany and Prayag 2013). The current research extends previous tourism attitudinal studies by indicating that Australian visitors’ attitudes to Iran are predicted by both cognitive and metacognitive thinking. While only the role of valence of emotion has been explored in prior self-validation hypothesis studies (Briñol, Petty, and Barden 2007), the current research sought to advance understanding of the role emotion by investigating the influence of emotional arousal on the interaction between thought confidence and attitude. Accordingly, tourism marketing stimuli need to evoke greater levels of emotional arousal for the amount of thought and thought confidence to have a stronger effect on attitude toward a destination. This is especially true for countries such as Iran as visitors may not have sufficient information about this destination (Jalilvand et al. 2012) and are doubtful of what their experiences would be like prior to visiting this tourism destination.

Source Credibility and Attitude

The results of the source credibility manipulation revealed that the effect of the amount of thought on attitude was significantly greater when participants perceived the video to be of high credibility. When participants were led to believe that the tourism video of Iran was made by a solo female traveler, the effect of the amount of thought on attitude was significantly greater than when they were told the video was made by a tourism agency. Tourism stimuli from highly credible sources have a positive impact on potential visitors’ attitudes (Pornpitakpan 2004; Kerstetter and Cho 2004; Shu and Scott 2014; Xie et al. 2011), confirming the results of this research. Further, consistent with the predictions of the elaboration likelihood model and heuristic-systematic model, high source credibility is perceived to be valid information that determines attitude through accelerating information when exposed to an advertisement or a message (Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2006; Briñol, Petty, and Tormala 2004; Chaiken and Maheswaran 1994; Briñol et al. 2009; Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2007). Tourism research has tended to focus on the use of traditional forms of advertising stimuli such as celebrity endorsement (Van der Veen and Song 2014), narratives (Ryu et al. 2019), destination postcards (Yüksel and Akgül 2007), or destination websites (Tang, Jang, and Morrison 2012) to investigate tourists’ attitudes toward destinations and subsequent behavioral intentions. In contrast, the current study used an organic agent (a solo female traveler) to assess the impact on potential visitors’ attitudinal judgments. The use of an organic agent aimed to highlight its role in the sharing of videos or stories on different social media platforms and shaping positive attitudes toward tourism destinations (Ayeh, Au, and Law 2013).

The findings did not support that there was a difference in the effect of the valence of thought on attitude between the high and low credibility conditions. Organic agents as highly credible sources have a stronger impact on attitudes and perception of destinations by affecting the valence of thought (Moyle and Croy 2006; Veasna, Wu, and Huang 2013; Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2007), which was not confirmed in the current research. Previous attitudinal research has indicated that high source credibility, serving as a peripheral cue, affects an individual’s attitude by influencing the valence of thought (Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2007; Briñol and Petty 2009). It could be concluded that irrespective of emotional arousal or source credibility level, the effect of the valence of thought on attitude was similar across the four experimental conditions. One potential reason could be the political instability and the risk associated with the Middle Eastern countries such as Iran (Sharifpour et al. 2014). Another possible explanation could be participants’ unfamiliarity with this tourism destination as about 98% of participants had never visited Iran and around 83% of respondents had never traveled to the Middle East. Therefore, potential visitors’ knowledge about tourism destination (Lankford and Howard 1994) could possibly make a difference in the effect of the valence of thought on attitude across the experimental conditions. The measurement of the valence of thought and research design is another possible reason for this finding and requires further investigation.

The effect of thought confidence on attitude across the two source credibility conditions was similar. The tourism literature suggests that organic agents have a greater impact on individuals’ attitudes toward tourism destinations compared to low credibility stimuli (Pornpitakpan 2004; Croy 2010) which was not confirmed in this study. Unlike the findings of this research, the self-validation hypothesis scholars demonstrated that the effect of thought confidence on attitude was greater when individuals were exposed to a highly credible message (Clark and Evans 2014; Clark et al. 2013; Tormala, Briñol, and Petty 2007). These findings may be explained as source credibility can affect attitudes by influencing the motivation for a specific outcome (Briñol, Petty, and Tormala 2004). It may be that the participants in this study were not motivated enough to visit Iran as a tourism destination, and thus the source credibility manipulation did not affect the confidence they held in their thoughts. Alternatively, visiting Iran may not be congruent with participants’ goals as discussed in the cognitive appraisal theory (Skavronskaya et al. 2017; Ma et al. 2013).

Conclusion

This research provides theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions. The current study advances knowledge on attitudinal research by investigating the role of emotional arousal in cognition and metacognition. The application of experimental design and PLS-MGA to compare the conditions contribute to tourism research methodologically. In addition, this research provides practical implications for marketing managers for the design of tourism stimuli to affect potential visitors’ thoughts and attitude toward destinations.

Theoretically, this research contributes to the tourism literature by responding to the call for the application of new theories (Wang 2016; Gao, Mattila, and Lee 2016; Sharpley 2014; Hadinejad et al. 2019) and by adopting a new framework, the self-validation hypothesis, from social psychology. Tourism literature has tended to focus on only two dimensions of thinking, the valence and amount of thought. This research advances tourism knowledge by combining three dimensions of thinking, valence, amount, and confidence of thought to investigate the effect of source characteristic manipulation on potential visitors’ attitudinal judgments. This research also adds value to the social psychology literature by examining the role of emotional arousal in explaining attitudes (Briñol and Petty 2015; Clark et al. 2013). Contributions are also made to tourism attitudinal research by investigating metacognition, which has received considerable attention in social psychology, but not in tourism studies.

Methodologically, this research contributes to the self-validation hypothesis literature as it is one of the first studies to apply PLS-MGA in social psychology to compare the structural model in experimental conditions. Previous studies have applied descriptive analysis, analysis of variance, t test, or regression analysis to analyze the effect of the experimental manipulation on thought confidence and attitude (e.g., Clarkson et al. 2013; Clarkson, Tormala, and Leone 2011; Clark and Thiem 2015). Furthermore, by employing an experimental design, this study expands the tourism literature (Fong et al. 2016). This research also benefited from a larger sample size for the experimental condition than previous studies (e.g., Briñol and Petty 2003; Briñol, Petty, and Barden 2007; Wang and Sparks 2016).

From a practical perspective, the study provides valuable knowledge for destination marketers on how to optimize the design of marketing stimuli to induce positive attitudes toward a destination. It was evidenced that emotionally arousing advertising has the potential to make potential visitors cognitively engaged with the stimuli and exert a positive impact on attitudes toward the destination. Emotionally arousing stimuli may enhance confidence in the thoughts and positive attitudes of potential visitors and subsequently influence their decision to travel. The findings are of particular relevance for destinations with risk-related issues and political instability, such as Iran. For these destinations in particular, affective features (i.e., emotional messages), compared to the rational characteristics of stimuli (i.e., source credibility), have a stronger effect on the thinking and thought confidence of potential visitors. Iranian destination marketers could potentially capitalize on local communities and their daily life along with historical monuments, nature, and food to provide advertising stimuli. These stimuli may allow potential visitors to cognitively engage with the advertisement and develop favorable thoughts and attitudes toward Iran as a destination. The findings also suggest that the use of organic agents as credible sources can influence potential visitors’ attitudes positively. The use of organic agents would support the stories and content shared by tourists on social media.

This study presents a number of potential avenues for future research. Future studies could be enhanced by assessing other nationalities’ thoughts and attitudes toward tourism in Iran by applying the self-validation hypothesis. Scholarly inquiry could focus on potential visitors who are geographically closer or have more knowledge and information about Iran as a tourism destination. Scholars could advance the self-validation hypothesis studies by incorporating other variables such as motivation to visit a destination, personality of participants, and the emotional and cultural intelligence to predict Australian attitudes toward Iran or expanding the research to other tourism destinations to better understand outbound tourism.

There are limitations within the study, for example, a lack of generalizability, as the work focused only on the Australian market. Although it was beneficial to investigate Australians’ attitudes toward Iran as a potential market, other nationalities might have different attitudes toward this destination. Data collection posed another limitation as the use of an online panel provider reduced the capacity to oversee participants’ attention during the study. Future studies would be advised to establish protocols to reduce this potential issue. Another limitation is related to the measurement of thought confidence using existing scales. It was not investigated if thought confidence arose from participants’ gut feelings, or if there was logical analysis associated with the level of confidence. Thought confidence may have dimensions that are yet to be analyzed in the tourism and social psychology research. Identifying the affective or cognitive nature of thought confidence might better explain the results. Personal differences were also not addressed; for example, differences in expressing emotions between genders has been noted in the literature (Kashdan et al. 2009). Future studies may be able to extend the findings of this research by considering personal differences and exploring how gender influences attitude formation. A final limitation stems from the manipulation of the source credibility. This limitation might be due to the application of tourism advertising of Iran as this country does not generate a positive image and is associated with political instability and risk-related issues (Morakabati 2011; Sharifpour et al. 2014). Therefore, measuring Australians’ attitude toward a country with strong brand image might lead to different results.

The study demonstrates that potential visitors not only need to be cognitively engaged with a tourism stimulus to generate positive thoughts, they also need to be confident in their thoughts to develop a favorable attitude toward a destination. The characteristics of tourism stimuli such as emotional arousal and perceived credibility can play an important role in creating these positive thoughts. Tourism stimuli characteristics affect cognition, metacognition, and attitude toward destinations, and highly emotionally arousing videos facilitate the amount of thought and thought confidence that have an impact on attitude. However, the image of different countries and destinations can affect the credibility of the message. Countries and destinations with a negative brand image may benefit from creating content from highly credible sources to positively influence potential visitors’ thoughts and attitudes toward the destination.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Arghavan Hadinejad

Author Biographies

Arghavan Hadinejad is a Lecturer at the University of South Australia, Australia. She has both industry and academic experience in tourism and destination marketing. Arghavan’s research focus is on cognitive psychology, social psychology, emotion, attitude, advertisement and destination marketing.

Anna Kralj is the Undergraduate Program Director at Griffith University, Australia. Anna’s research interests focus on human resource management, service management and attitudinal studies.

Noel Scott is an Adjunct Professor at the Sustainability Research Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, Australia. He has extensive international tourism experience as a trainer, consultant, guest speaker, advisor and mentor. His research interests lie in tourism marketing; emotion studies and cognitive psychology.

Brent D. Moyle is an Associate Professor whose research primarily focuses on the sustainable management of tourism destinations, application of tourism in health studies, emotion and destination marketing.

Sarah Gardiner is a Deputy Director of Griffith Institute for Tourism at Griffith University, Australia. Her research interests include destination marketing and development, tourism, economic and event development strategies, and consumer behaviour and market analysis.

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