The visual effects of emoji in social media travel sharing on user engagement

Abstract

Emojis in social media travel sharing are an effective tool for enhancing emotional expression or promoting semantic interpretation. However, the visual appeal of emojis as small icons remains uncertain. This study shows that using facial emojis in desirability travel sharing enhances tourists' visual attention and social media engagement. In contrast, using non-facial emojis in feasibility travel sharing leads to more effective visual attention and social media engagement. These relationships are mediated by imagery fluency and influenced differently depending on the emoji's position within a sentence (mid-sentence vs. end of sentence). Our research contributes to the study of emojis' visual appeal by providing a theoretical explanation of how and why the interaction effects of emoji visual types and travel sharing content occur. This study also offers practical implications for how tourists, travel marketers, and social media platforms can use emojis appropriately to increase engagement.