Emotion Measurement in Tourism Destination Marketing: A Comparative Electroencephalographic and Behavioral Study

It is commonly assumed that TV commercials successfully influence affective tourism destination image by coupling positive emotions to a destination. In this study we record emotional responses to destination pictures before and after viewing a destination TV commercial from participants’ brains using electroencephalography (EEG). A control group of participants watched the same destination pictures, and an unrelated TV commercial. Emotion-related event-related potential (ERP) components, the P2 and LPP, were derived from the EEG. For the participants that watched the destination TV commercial, the P2 and the LPP were larger in response to destination pictures after compared to before having watched the TV commercial. This effect was not observed in the control group. In a behavioral version of the same experiment, we did not observe any effects in the self-report data. It is concluded that ERP methodology is a useful tool to complement the toolbox of tourism marketing researchers.