Localization or globalization? A psychophysiological approach to understanding tourists’ emotional experiences toward symbolic linguistic landscape

ABSTRACT

The local dialect and English in the linguistic landscape (LL) help to create an atmosphere of localization and globalization, which impacts tourists’ perceptions. This study collected skin electrophysiological and self-report data (n = 54) and jointly revealed the emotional experience. The results show that, according to construal level theory, local and global LL stimulates higher arousal and pleasure respectively, furthermore, tourists' perception consistency and understanding of LL play a mediating and moderating effect in the process of emotional experience. Therefore, the design of local and global LL should consider the balance of familiarity and novelty based on psychological distance.

KEYWORDS:

• Linguistic landscape
• localization
• globalization
• emotional experience
• construal level theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Number 42071169]; Shaanxi Science and Technology Program [Grant Number 2019ZDLSF07-04].