Emotional Appeals in Tourism TV Commercials: A Psycho-Physiological Study

Abstract

This study adopts psycho-physiological techniques to examine the impacts of different types of emotional appeals (used in tourism TV commercials) on consumers’ emotional and evaluative responses. A total of 101 participants were exposed to 18 existing tourism TVCs while their psycho-physiological and self-report data were collected. Findings suggest that emotional appeals in tourism advertising should not be considered as homogeneous. Specifically, different types of emotional appeals in tourism TVCs can be discriminated based on their ability to evoke emotional responses. More important, the results of this article have advanced the general theories addressing the effects of ad-evoked emotions on advertising effects and concluded that the role ad-evoked emotion plays in generating consumers’ emotional and evaluative responses depended on the type of emotional appeal used. Methodological, theoretical, and practical implications of this study are discussed.