Studies have suggested that positive emotions may occur in mature adult tourists' experiences, but the processes linking participants' social contexts and positive emotions are unknown. The study used an interpretive ethnographic approach with participant observation and conversations with key informants to document positive emotions in two mature adult tourism experiences, an educational tour of a Civil War battlefield and a model airplane contest. Interpretive thematic analysis revealed amusement from humor, warmth of friendship, interest in activities, and sublime reactions to loss. These processes explain how participants' social contexts produced positive emotions, and why particular emotions occurred. Furthermore, findings show the importance of positive emotions to building a sense of community among participants, fostering regular repeat participation.
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There is ample evidence to suggest that positive emotions lead to valuable life outcomes. This study examines daily positive emotion development before, during, and after a leisure travel experience. The study measured positive emotions on a daily basis in 25 mature adult participants before, during, and after two leisure travel experiences. Consistent with the "peak" model in previous research, positive emotions overall-and joy and interest in particular-increased before leisure travel, were elevated during travel, and declined afterward. Implications for practice include managing positive emotions before and after leisure travel. Future research should consider positive emotions in other populations and other leisure experiences.
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Previous work on tourists' positive and negative affect has mainly used cross-sectional data. Consequently, little is known about how motivations are related to tourists' emotions over an extended period of time. The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of travel motivation on tourists' emotions and whether the impact would remain the same across different time points. The sample consisted of a panel of approximately 2000 leisure travelers in the Netherlands. After eliminating missing data, 412 panelists completed all seven questionnaires over the nine months of the study. The results indicated that motivation does not have a significant impact on tourists' emotions over a relatively long period of time. Specifically, the study found that travel motivations or a cluster of travel motivations do not seem to have significant within-subject or between-subject impacts on tourists' emotions over a nine-month period. The findings demonstrate the complex relationships between tourists’ travel motivation and emotions and highlight the importance of a longitudinal approach to studying emotions in the tourism context. Managerial implications for destination marketers are discussed.
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Vacation travel is an essential ingredient in quality of life. However, the contribution of vacations to quality of life could be improved in two ways: by optimizing the decisions people make when planning and undertaking their vacations, and by travel industry testing and implementing––based on evidence from the experience lab––innovative experience products which touch customers' emotions.
We had been involved in the redesign of the 4 Period Rooms of the Marquise Palace, also called the Palace of Secrets, in Bergen op Zoom. This design was based on the biography of a historical figure: Marie Anne van Arenberg, whose dramatic life was marked by secrets. Each of the 4 rooms represents a turning moment in Marie Anne’s story: the official marriage, the secret marriage and the betrayal, the dilemma and choice, with, in a final room, the epilogue. These different episodes are reflected in the way the rooms are furnished: the ballroom, the bedroom, the dining room. The Secret Marquise as design and exhibition has brought more visitors to the museum. As designers and researchers, however, we were interested in understanding more about this success, and, in particular, in understanding the visitors experience, both emotionally and sensorially at different moments/situations during the story-driven experience.In the fall of 2021, the visitors’ lived experience was evaluated using different approaches: a quantitative approach using biometric measurements to register people’s emotions during their visit, and a qualitative one consisting of a combination of observations, visual imagery, and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).Qualitatively, our aim was to understand how respondents made sense of Marie Anne’s story in the way in which this was presented throughout the exhibition. We specifically looked at the personal context and frame of reference (e.g., previous experiences, connection to the visitor’s own life story, associations with other stories from other sources). In the design of the rooms, we used a combination of digital/interactive elements (such as a talking portrait, an interactive dinner table, an interactive family painting), and traditional physical objects (some 17th century original objects, some reproductions from that time). The second focal point of the study is to understand how these different elements lead the visitors experience.
Vacation travel is an essential ingredient in quality of life. However, the contriubtion of vacations to quality of life could be improved in two ways: by optimizing the decisions people make when planning and undertaking their vacations, and by travel industry testing and implementing––based on evidence––innovative experience products which touch customers' emotions. Secondary analysis of two longitudinal panel datasets will address the impact of people's decisions in planning and undertaking their vacations, on their quality of life. Field experiments in cooperation with travel industry partners will address the effects of innovative experience products, such as apps designed to help vacationers meet fellow travelers, or personalized memory books designed to help people relive their vacations after return home. Experience data in these field experiments will be collected using technology of the Breda University of Applied Sciences' Experience Measurement Lab, a unique facility for measuring emotions continuously from research participants' body and mind. Thus, the project will contribute to general understanding of quality of life, will feed valuable knowledge about experience design, measurement, and implementation to the Dutch travel industry, and will support the Breda University of Applied Sciences' key research theme of Designing, Measuring, and Managing Experiences. Inspiring examples from the project will reinforce research methods courses in the academic Bachelor of Science in Tourism, the HBO Master in Tourism Destination Management, and the academic Master of Science in Leisure Studies. Wearable emotion measurement from the field experiment will be a cornerstone of the fourth-year HBO-bachelor module Business Intelligence, where students will conduct their own research projects on experience measurement using consumer wearables, based on knowledge from this postdoc project. Finally, a number of methodological and content questions within the project will serve as suitable thesis assignments for graduation students in the above educational tracks.
