Current and potential methods for measuring emotion in tourism experiences: a review

Abstract

This study provides an assessment of methods used in existing tourism research to measure emotion and discusses the potential for use of psychophysiological methods such as electro-dermal analysis, facial muscle activity, heart rate response, eye tracking system and vascular measures. Psychophysiological measurement techniques have been reported in the marketing, advertising and media literature; however, to the best knowledge of the authors, no studies are reported in the tourism literature. Instead, studies of emotion in the tourism literature invariably employ self-report questionnaire methods which capture only tourists' high-order emotions and are subject to a variety of forms of bias. Unconscious emotional responses that can provide unbiased portrayal of individuals' initial emotional reactions when exposed to a stimulus have been largely ignored. The paper concludes that studies combining both self-report and psychophysiological measures are needed and areas for future research are discussed.

Disruptive ethnography and knowledge co-creation

“…Self-report methods have been criticised for the potential biases caused by respondents' conscious attempts to edit their responses, for example to maintain status, alongside unconscious ones, including selective recall (cf. Barrett & Barrett, 2001;Li, Scott, & Walters, 2015). As an alternative, some researchers have developed mobile technologies to help capture aspects of the experience in-situ (see Birenboim, 2016;Quinlan Cutler, Carmichael, & Doherty, 2014;Quinlan Cutler, Doherty, & Carmichael, 2016); others have also sought to expand the scope and procedures of consumer experience research by incorporating psychophysiological methods to understand aspects of the social and physical environment that evoke particular reactions (Li, Scott, & Walters, 2015).…”

“…Barrett & Barrett, 2001;Li, Scott, & Walters, 2015). As an alternative, some researchers have developed mobile technologies to help capture aspects of the experience in-situ (see Birenboim, 2016;Quinlan Cutler, Carmichael, & Doherty, 2014;Quinlan Cutler, Doherty, & Carmichael, 2016); others have also sought to expand the scope and procedures of consumer experience research by incorporating psychophysiological methods to understand aspects of the social and physical environment that evoke particular reactions (Li, Scott, & Walters, 2015). Such psychophysiological, technology-driven methods offer useful insights into stimulus responses within experiential consumption, which may be unconscious and captured in-situ; these methods are also driven by an underpinning assumption that they help to generate data 'scientifically' and 'objectively'.…”

Using the Internet of Things to Support Emotional Health

“…Ambient Systems 12 201 -201 | Volume | Issue 1 | e1 are the following: arousal (deactivating or activating), valence (negative or positive), intensity (low or intense), duration (short or long), frequency of its occurrence (seldom or frequent) and time (retrospective like relief, actual like enjoyment, prospective like hope) [10]. These two approaches are represented and related in the twodimension "circumplex model of affect" [19], which has been used as a fundamental emotional model for many applications.…”

“…This is also called biometric measurement of human emotions [13]. Most of these measures are based on recordings of electrical signals produced by the brain, heart, muscles, and electrodermal analysis [9] [10]. Biosensors are usually integrated into portable devices, smartphones, and mainly in wearable sensors or even embedded in clothing [15].…”

“…Although sometimes they are used interchangeably, it is important to consider the difference between the terms of "emotion" and others such as "affect", "feeling", or "mood", which are different in degree of consciousness, duration, and distinctiveness ability [10].…”