Recently, Tang Yuting, a first-year graduate student of the College of Tourism at Huaqiao University (HQU), published a first-authored paper titled “What Makes You Palpitate with Excitement? The Differentiation Effect and Mechanism of Message Appeal in Tourism Short Videos”, in Journal of Travel Research(JTR) online.

JTR is a top-ranked research journal focusing on the business of travel and tourism development, management, marketing, economics and behavior. JTR maintains an impact factor of 8.9 as of 2024, and is a JCR Q1 journal and ABS four-star journal.

How destinations use tourism short videos to stand out in the fierce digital market is crucial. Based on the “cognitive-affective-conative” theoretical model, this study investigates the differential effects and mechanisms of tourism short video message appeal on users’ travel intention by conducting three experiments. The findings show that: emotional appeal is more likely to stimulate users’ travel intention, and telepresence, interest arousal and attitude toward the destination play the mediating roles. Moreover, high-narrative tourism short videos have stronger emotional appeal effects on users’ telepresence and travel intention. However, there was no significant difference in the effect of the two message appeals in low-narrative tourism short videos. This study reveals the differential influences of various message appeals, highlights the synergistic and complementary effects of interest arousal and attitude toward the destination, and provides practical insights to design attractive tourism videos.

Zhang Shuning of the College of Tourism, HQU is the corresponding author. The first author’s primary affiliation is with Huaqiao University. Additionally, Professor Ruan Wenqi and first-year doctoral student Zhou Yan from Huaqiao University, along with Professor Li Xi from the City University of Macao, also made their contributions.

Link to paper: https://doi.org/10.1177/00472875231225396

(Editor: Wei Linying)