Emotional dynamics of virtual reality tourism experience: An application of day reconstruction and physiological methods

Abstract

AbstractThis study investigates how the succession of real‐time emotions during a virtual reality tourism experience can shape the retrospective assessment of such experience. A total of 363 participants were exposed to a virtual reality tourism experience while their self‐report and skin conductance data were collected. Results reveal that average pleasure dominates peak and end moments in driving consumers' post‐viewing evaluation of virtual reality tourism experience. Meanwhile, the time to emotional arousal peak was found to be a significant predictor of consumers' visit intention in the virtual reality tourism setting. The findings advance our understanding of how individuals assess virtual reality destination experience on the basis of moment‐to‐moment affective data and extend the literature on emotional dynamics and virtual reality tourism.