Framing food tourism videos: What drives viewers’ attitudes and behaviors?

Despite the prevalence of food tourism-related short videos on social networking services, few studies have examined the effectiveness of such videos in promoting food tourism. This study aims to address this gap in literature via three experimental studies. Specifically, Study 1 reveals significantly different attitudes across participants who watch food tourism videos with different framing styles (information-focused, emotion-focused, and commercial-focused); and viewers’ attitudes significantly influence their video-sharing and destination visit intention. Study 2 suggests that information-focused and emotion-focused videos influence viewers’ attitude via distinct routes, that is, cognitive evaluations and aroused emotions, respectively. Study 3 finds that different locations and lengths of embedded commercial content in a video induce different levels of brand awareness. This study is amongst the first to uncover the effects of food tourism video framing styles on viewers’ attitudes and behaviors, unravel the underlying mechanism, and explore the most effective brand placement strategies in food tourism promotion. Highlights Information-focused video is the most effective in promoting food tourism. Information-focused video triggers cognitive evaluations. Placing commercial content in the middle or end of a video is more effective. Ten-second embedded commercial content is as persuasive as the traditional 15 seconds.