In this paper, we critically examine the use of (negative) emotions in psychology, consumer behaviour and tourism. We find that (1) negative emotions form an integral part of the tourist experience in certain tourism contexts, particularly in dark tourism and types of travel that involve transformation of the self, (2) negative emotions can have multiple positive outcomes and (3) these positive outcomes are present in hedonic and non-hedonic tourism contexts, yet they occur occasionally in hedonic and more systematically in non-hedonic tourism contexts. We conclude that negative emotions contribute to eudaimonic experiences by affecting different types of meaning in life.
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The purpose of this study was to examine changes in specific positive and negative emotions during a vacation, as well as their interactions with personality. Using a questionnaire and diary, 39 American and Dutch vacationers' emotions high in both positivity and arousal exhibited an inverted U-shape curve, suggesting that they felt better during the second section rather than the end of their vacation. None of the negative emotions exhibited significant changes over time. When the impacts of personality on specific emotions were addressed, personality was found to determine the baseline levels of fear and sadness and moderate change in disgust across individuals' vacations. The results suggest that tourism managers and researchers must acknowledge and address the change of emotions tourists experience during a vacation and the role of personality in influencing that change.
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Visits to sites associated with death and suffering are considered emotionally laden. Few studies empirically investigated visitor emotions at such sites. This study examines emotional responses of 241 visitors to concentration camp memorial Neuengamme and assesses how emotions are associated with long-term consequences of revisit intentions and positive word of mouth. Tourists experience negative emotions more intensely compared with positive emotions. Negative emotions predict long-term behavioral intentions more than positive emotions do. Shock and sadness are of particular importance. This study suggests that certain negative emotions also have the power to broaden-and-build and may have long-term behavioral consequences.
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In 2007 at Ropecon, a large Finnish roleplaying convention, Emily Care Boss coined the term bleed to refer to emotional transference that sometimes happened to players of roleplaying games. Bleed describes an effect where emotions and attitudes experienced while roleplaying a character continue on after the roleplaying session was over, or the other way around, where a player brings their own feelings into the character they are embodying. For example, a player would roleplay a romance with another player's character, and then develop feelings for said player after the game was over. Bleed can create powerful effects in a roleplaying session, both positive and negative, which has resulted in the development of various best practices and safety tools that analogue game designers can draw upon, and roleplaying games frequently have mechanics designed around inducing and maximizing particular types of bleed in their players. Bleed mechanics lend themselves particularly well to exploring queer and otherwise marginalized identities, generating empathy, and exploring acts of political resistance. They are a powerful tool in the analogue game designers’ toolbox. Digital games make comparatively far less use of bleed in their designs than analogue games—the concept of bleed is not well-known among digital game designers. Consequently, there is little guidance for designing digital bleed mechanics, and insufficient safety tools with which to do so. With how powerful these effects can be, the knowledge and tools gaps for digital games needs addressing. This research project will create primarily digital narrative games that are explicitly designed to invoke bleed, and seeks to provide designers with new frameworks and safety tools to create bleed effects for digital games. Games will be created with varying themes and approaches regarding identity and storytelling to explore how, in particular, narrative design influences bleed in digital games.
