Family Tourist Emotional Experience: Emotion-Generative and Regulatory Process

Family tourism has received much scholarly attention, but few studies have examined family tourists’ experience by viewing them as active agents that generate and regulate emotions. This study aims to disclose family tourists’ dynamic emotional experiences through probing into their emotion generative and regulatory process. An extended Chinese family taking a 6-day overseas trip was recruited and each member was interviewed multiple times throughout the pre-, during- (assisted by participatory observation and psychophysiological data), and post-trip phrases. The family tourists reported 64 emotional episodes, 32 discrete emotions, and 13 emotion regulation strategies. Their emotion-generation and regulation were revealed as an interdependent and cyclical cognitive appraisal process that occurs in complex social settings. The proposed psychological mechanism model contributes to tourism and psychological literature by highlighting the dynamic and social nature of family tourists’ emotions, and the role of memory in their emotion dynamics. Future research directions on family tourists’ emotion regulation are suggested.