Physiological and self-report methods to the measurement of emotion in tourism

ABSTRACT

There is strong growth in research on tourist emotion, with a substantial scholarly debate emerging, surrounding approaches to measurement. Recently objective physiological methods for measurement of emotion have been applied in the tourism field. However, there are few studies which explore the benefits and limitations of applying physiological and self-report methods to measure emotions. This research aims to compare and contrast physiological and self-report methods to assess emotional responses to tourism marketing stimuli where music was manipulated. This research assessed emotional responses from 37 participants to three tourism advertisements of Iran using four key methods; specifically, FaceReader™, skin conductance, self-report surveys and post hoc interviews. This research found that the light rhythmic music tends to evoke positive emotions and a higher level of emotional arousal in participants than does the traditional Iranian music or a video without music. Physiological and self-report measures of emotional arousal were inconsistent, but both techniques found similar results for assessing the valence of emotions. Thus, results highlight the importance of applying physiological techniques in combination with self-report surveys and post hoc interviews to provide a better and more accurate understanding of emotional experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• FaceReader^TM
• skin conductance
• self-report
• tourism marketing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Arghavan Hadinejad is a Tourism PhD candidate at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. She has both industry and academic experience in tourism and destination marketing. Arghavan’s research focus is on social psychology, emotion, attitude, advertisement, physiological technologies and destination marketing.

Brent D. Moyle is an Associate Professor and Dean (graduate studies) at University of the Sunshine Coast and a Mid-Career Senior Research Fellow at Advance Queensland, Australia. His research primarily focuses on the sustainable management of tourism destinations, application of tourism in health studies, emotion and destination marketing.

Noel Scott is a Professor of Tourism at 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.

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

ORCID

Noel Scott http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8770-2563