How visual and textual information influences repeat tourists: Insights from self-report data and an eye-tracking experiment

Abstract

It remains unclear how visual and textual information in destination pictures influences potential repeat visitors to revisit. This study investigates how tourist-generated content influences positive recall emotions and affects potential repeat tourists' willingness to revisit when viewing destination pictures and text. This study conducts a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial experiment combined with eye-tracking. Visual information varied by category (space vs. subject), and textual information was manipulated as absent or present. The results indicate that compared with subject-category destination pictures, space-category destination pictures are more effective in inducing tourists' positive recall emotion and willingness to revisit. Positive recall emotions evoked by the pictures mediate the relationship between destination pictures and tourists' willingness to revisit. In addition, textual information moderates the effect of visual information on emotions and willingness to revisit. However, the moderated mediating effect of positive recall emotions is only observed in the absence of textual information. These findings offer insights for destination marketing to attract repeat tourists.