The power of visual perspective and language arousal: Tailoring short videos for tourism activities

Tourism short videos have become a crucial tool for sparking travel inspiration. However, how to integrate different short-video elements to enhance marketing effectiveness remains underexplored. Grounded in the elaboration likelihood model, this study investigates the matching effects and underlying mechanisms between visual perspective (first-person vs. third-person) and tourism activity type (challenging vs. relaxing). The research approach contains one secondary data analysis and three scenario-based experiments. Our findings indicate that in tourism short videos, relaxing activities combined with a third-person perspective evoke aesthetic pleasure, whereas challenging activities paired with a first-person perspective elicit awe, both of which enhance travel inspiration. Additionally, language arousal moderates the aforementioned matching effect and its indirect effect on travel inspiration through awe. This article enriches theoretical research on tourism short video marketing by confirming the integration framework of visual and language elements, and offers practical insights for different tourism activity marketing.