Unveiling the Complexity of Tourists’ Visual Attention and Emotions Toward Destination Pictures

Destination marketing is an image-oriented industry but understanding the complex nature of visual attention, destination attributes, and tourists’ emotions is challenging. Destination attributes can be represented by multiple types of cues embedded in destination pictures. Yet, perceived stress may also influence the relationship between visual attention and emotional responses to destination pictures. This study investigates the relationships between visual attention and emotions under multiple stimuli in both natural and built destination pictures and assesses these relationships among tourists with varying levels of perceived stress. Results indicate that soundscape stimuli increase tourists’ visual attention to natural elements and evoke positive emotions. Textual stimuli increase visual attention to built elements, but excessive textual stimuli distract visual attention from built elements. Visual attention to natural elements evokes tourists’ positive emotions, especially those with low perceived stress. Our findings enrich attention restoration theory and multiple resource theory and advance eye-tracking analytics in tourism research.