Seeing means feeling? The transformation mechanism from visual attention to emotional experience toward linguistic landscape in cultural district

Abstract

Emotional experience forms the core of the tourism experience, with visual and auditory senses serving as primary channels for such experiences. Despite their significance as key audio-visual stimuli, the impact of linguistic landscapes on visual attention and tourist emotions remains underexplored. Experiment 1, utilizing on-site video footage of cultural districts and eye-tracking technology, revealed a correlation–although not an equivalence–between visual attention and emotional experiences. Experiment 2 expanded upon this by gathering data from 165 tourists observing Shaanxi’s linguistic landscape through eye-tracking devices and electromyography. The results reveal a transformation process–from visual stimulation to experiencing emotional engagement. This transformation is mediated by aesthetic experience for emotional pleasure and perceptual fluency for emotional arousal. This study underscores the complexity of the tourist gaze, emphasizing the necessity for individual cognitive processing and recognition. By elucidating the emotional mechanisms underlying tourists’ observation of linguistic landscapes, this research provides actionable insights for destination landscape design and tourism experience management.