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Visitor attitude is a critical component that affects potential tourists’ decision making and, ultimately, destination choice. Tourism marketers seek to influence prospective visitors’ attitudes through reinforcing existing associations with the destination or creating new associations. In addition, marketers use persuasive marketing stimuli to affect associations with the destination. In particular, the design or characteristics of marketing stimuli such as the perceived credibility and emotive aspects exert a significant impact on potential tourists’ attitudes towards, and associations with, the destination. Furthermore, the characteristics of marketing messages can influence tourists’ cognitive and affective evaluations of a place, confidence in and consideration of a holiday destination. Social psychologists believe that message characteristics influence attitude via three dimensions of thinking: the amount of thought; valence of thinking; and thought confidence. The assertion is that the cognitive engagement with a message and the favourability of thoughts, along with an individual’s confidence in their thoughts predict attitude. However, tourism scholars have investigated only the first two dimensions of thinking: the amount and valence of thoughts. Therefore, the role of thought confidence has been understudied in the tourism context. Thought confidence forms part of the self-validation hypothesis, which asserts that thought generation is not enough to influence attitude, rather people need to feel confident in their thinking (Petty, Briñol & Tormala, 2002). Although social psychologists have examined the influence of a number of variables on attitude, the role of emotion, and specifically emotional arousal, is not well discussed in the self-validation hypothesis literature. This thesis aims to fill the gap in the tourism and social psychology literature through adapting the main elements of previous theories of attitude – notably the elaboration likelihood model and heuristic systematic model - along with the self-validation hypothesis to study the effect of the three dimensions of thinking on attitude towards a less known tourism destination, Iran. To achieve that aim, this research applies a two-stage sequential design to manipulate the emotional arousal and perceived credibility of tourism stimuli and measures the effect of the three dimensions of thinking on attitude. In order to manipulate the characteristics of an advertisement of Iran, a mock tourism marketing stimulus was created in Stage I. This stage involved two focus groups and Delphi panels to select the images and video segments of Iran to be included in a mock advertisement. The Delphi panellists and focus group members selected nine images of historical monuments, nature, and food along with segments of current videos of Iran to be included in the mock advertisement. Subsequently, the mock advertisement, that was created as a combination of selected photos and segments of videos was pilot tested from a representative sample of Australians to check the emotional arousal and perceived credibility manipulation. In particular, FaceReader, skin conductance, a questionnaire and post-hoc interviews were applied to assess the emotional arousal and source credibility manipulation. The results indicated that while the video with light rhythmic music was considered as a highly emotionally arousing video, the same video but without music was regarded as a low emotionally arousing advertisement. In addition, “A solo female traveller who visited Iran in 2017” was considered as a highly credible source and “A travel agency in Iran for promotional purposes” was believed to be a low credible one. Stage II is the experiment phase (N = 416). In this stage, participants were randomly assigned to a two (emotional arousal: high or low) × two (source credibility: high or low) between subject factorial design. The results indicated that all three dimensions of thinking, the amount and valence of thoughts in addition to thought confidence, can positively affect potential visitors’ attitude towards the destination. The findings of the research also revealed that participants were more cognitively engaged with the stimuli and confident in their thoughts, and generated more positive thoughts and more favourable attitudes about Iran as a destination when the tourism stimulus was perceived as highly credible and evoked high levels of emotional arousal. This thesis provides a number of contributions. Theoretically, the study adds value to the body of literature in social psychology by examining the role of emotional arousal in explaining thought confidence and attitude. There is also a contribution to the tourism literature by adapting the self-validation hypothesis from social psychology and adding a metacognitive aspect to attitudinal research in the tourism context. This research is also novel in exploring the effect of source credibility on attitude from a metacognitive perspective in the tourism literature. Methodologically, this research contributes to the tourism literature by its novel application of physiological tools - FaceReader and skin conductance - to analyse emotions elicited in response to tourism advertisements. From a practical perspective, the present study provides valuable feedback for destination managers and marketers, especially for the design of marketing stimuli. Managers of less-known destinations need to create emotionally arousing advertising in order to make potential visitors cognitively engaged with the stimuli, make them confident in their thoughts and thus exert a positive impact on subsequent attitude towards the destination. Furthermore, Iranian tourism practitioners can rely on the content and stories shared on social media by real tourists as credible references to encourage potential visitors to travel to their destination.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed Design of advertising stimuli is critical for marketing, especially to destinations which have limited exposure to visitors. Existing studies postulate the design of advertising affects the amount and valence of thoughts (Cognition), thought confidence (Metacognition) and attitudes towards a destination. Despite this, limited research has considered the influence of emotional arousal and perceived credibility of advertising on cognition, metacognition and attitude. This research implemented a two-by-two experimental design to examine how cognition, metacognition and attitude differ across different levels of emotional arousal and perceived credibility of an advertisement of Iran. Results demonstrate participants showed higher cognitive engagement with the advertisement and more thought confidence and developed more favourable thinking and attitude to Iran in response to a highly credible and emotionally arousing tourism stimulus. A key contribution of this research is that high emotional arousal evokes more favourable cognition, metacognition and attitude towards a destination.

The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the education sector has received considerable attention from scholars; however, its potency and application among tourism learners are yet to be discerned. Accordingly, this research note articulates the potential impact and limitations of the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in tourism education practices. In particular, the paper aims to raise awareness among tourism educators regarding the disruptive potential of ChatGPT and its impact on academic integrity and ethics. This paper contributes to tourism education practices on AI and robotics by critically discussing ChatGPT from a cognitive science perspective and providing recommendations on how to minimise AI plagiarism in tourism education. This research argues for adapting novel pedagogies as technology evolves and raises the need for AI ethical use guidelines in tourism education. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Prior self-validation hypothesis studies suggest that an individual’s attitude toward advertising is affected by the cognitive processing of the message and the valence of emotion. Yet, the effect of emotional arousal and stimulus credibility on attitudes toward a destination has not been discerned. This study employs the self-validation hypothesis to investigate the effect of the three dimensions of thinking on attitudes toward Iran. Participants (N = 416) were randomly assigned to a two (high vs. low arousal) × two (high vs. low source credibility) experiment. The partial least squares multigroup analysis results indicated that the emotionally arousing stimulus led to a greater influence of the amount and confidence of thought on attitudes. The effect of the amount of thought on attitude was greater in response to a credible stimulus. This research advances knowledge by revealing that emotional arousal has a significant positive impact on three dimensions of thinking and positive attitudes. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Refereed/Peer-reviewed Although tourism is considered a vehicle for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to eradicate poverty, protect the environment and facilitate social inclusion, limited empirical work has assessed the engagement of tourism literature with the associated 2030 Agenda. Water, both fresh and salt, is directly or indirectly implicated throughout the SDGs, and tourism both depends on clean water and exacerbates water problems. However, there has been limited discourse that maps water-centric knowledge and its relationship to the SDGs within the sustainable tourism literature. This bibliometric analysis, consequently, draws on a database of 220 relevant journal articles to identify affiliated themes and assess their relationship to the SDGs. Findings categorise the knowledge base into three first order themes, with water situated respectively as resource, attraction and hazard. This literature indirectly supports the Agenda through specific SDGs of poverty eradication (#1), sustainable economic growth (#8), and sustainable consumption (#12). Direct links occur between the themes and specific SDGs, as with resource (#6, sustainable management of water for all), attraction (#14, life beneath the sea) and hazard (#13, climate change action). Future research in the tourism and water nexus should consider deeper engagement with priorities as outlined in the SDGs.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed This study aims to assess the factors that influence consumer attitude towards a destination, and to present a new conceptual framework for further investigation of the role of cognition and metacognition in tourism attitudinal research. Existing research in social psychology has established that three factors influence consumer attitude; amount of thought, valence of thinking and thought confidence. While cognition, amount and valence of thinking, has been studied previously in tourism research, metacognition, measured as thought confidence, is often overlooked in the field. To address this gap, this research note employs the self-validation hypothesis from social psychology to explore consumers' attitudes towards a tourism destination. The findings show metacognition plays a central role in forming destination attitude. Also, valence of thinking has the strongest impact on attitude. This research note contributes to tourism knowledge by exploring the cognitive and metacognitive aspects of attitude formation. In addition, this study adds value by proposing a model to guide future tourism attitudinal research.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore recent trends in the theories and methods applied to studies on residents’ attitudes. Design/methodology/approach To achieve the objective of this research, this paper provides a review of 90 journal articles on residents’ attitudes towards tourism published between 2011 and 2017. The relevant articles were then analysed using content analysis. Findings Key findings revealed that although social exchange theory is still dominant in exploring residents’ attitudes towards tourism, new frameworks are beginning to emerge such as institutional theory and bottom-up spillover theory. Nonetheless, alternative theoretical perspective has only been applied once or twice and requires further engagement. Quantitative methods still dominate the field, with the geographic dispersal of studies spanning 33 countries. Research limitations/implications A potential limitation of this review is that articles published only in four leading tourism journals, namely, ATR, JTR, TM and JOST, were analysed. Originality/value This review contributes to the literature in tourism by assessing the shift in the application of theory and methodological approaches in residents’ attitudes studies from previous systematic reviews. This study adds to the body of knowledge by providing an overview of the existing status of research on residents’ attitudes towards tourism, providing direction for future scholarly inquiry. A further contribution of this review is an indication of not only the data collection methods but also data analysis techniques which have not been done in previous review articles on residents’ attitudes towards tourism. As opposed to other systematic reviews, this paper assessed the geographical setting of studies on residents’ attitudes towards tourism.

There is an ongoing scholarly debate surrounding how culture defines consumers’ responses to advertisements (Wahid & Ahmed, 2011). Cultural differences affect the way people think about an advertisement and consequently influence advertising interpretations. A large number of marketing studies have explored the effect of cultural differences on thinking style in response to advertising, with East Asian countries as holistic thinkers and Western societies as analytical thinkers (Nisbett et al., 2001). While holistic thinking involves the subject as a whole, analytical thinking focuses on attributes of the object. Cultural differences result in different perceptions and attitudes toward advertisements (Zou, 2005). However, there is limited research on emotional responses to advertising in different cultures…

There is strong growth in research on tourist emotion, with a substantial scholarly debate emerging, surrounding approaches to measurement. Recently objective physiological methods for measurement of emotion have been applied in the tourism field. However, there are few studies which explore the benefits and limitations of applying physiological and self-report methods to measure emotions. This research aims to compare and contrast physiological and self-report methods to assess emotional responses to tourism marketing stimuli where music was manipulated. This research assessed emotional responses from 37 participants to three tourism advertisements of Iran using four key methods; specifically, FaceReader™, skin conductance, self-report surveys and post hoc interviews. This research found that the light rhythmic music tends to evoke positive emotions and a higher level of emotional arousal in participants than does the traditional Iranian music or a video without music. Physiological and self-report measures of emotional arousal were inconsistent, but both techniques found similar results for assessing the valence of emotions. Thus, results highlight the importance of applying physiological techniques in combination with self-report surveys and post hoc interviews to provide a better and more accurate understanding of emotional experiences. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Research on visitor attitudes to tourism destinations is an established area of scholarly attention. This research note provides a critical commentary of the theoretical trends in visitor attitude studies based on a systematic review of 162 journal articles in top tier journals between 1977 and 2019. This short communication contributes to tourism research and scholarship by demonstrating that prior research on visitor attitude is predominantly descriptive and lacks theoretical engagement, with the gap between a theoretical and theoretical articles expanding proportionally over time. Scholars should consider the application of active theory from parent (sub)disciplines such as social psychology and cognitive psychology to provide future research on visitor attitudes to tourism destinations with much needed depth, substance and theoretical maturity. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

While scholars have reflected on the roles played by psychology in tourism studies, there has been only limited exploration of the contributions of this discipline to tourism doctoral research. The aim of this study is to examine how psychology features in tourism-focused doctoral dissertations completed in the United States (US), Canada, Australia and New Zealand from 1974 to 2013. A content analysis was conducted on the 359 tourism doctoral theses identified during that four-decade period as drawing directly on theory informed by psychology and/or employing psychological concepts. The results indicate that motivation/destination choice, tourist behaviour/experiences, and attitudes/satisfaction are the most prevalent conceptual themes studied and expectancy-value theory the most frequently-invoked theory by psychology-informed doctoral research in tourism. Although collectively drawing on a wide range of methods throughout this period, an increase in the use of mixed and qualitative methodologies in recent decades was evident. This paper adds to a suite of studies exploring the scholarly contributions and trends in the application of psychology to the study of tourism. It serves to highlight gaps and avenues for further research, including the need for a more strategic and documented approach to the selection and application of psychology-informed theory, theoretical frameworks and models. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

PurposeThis review aims to discuss concepts and theories from cognitive psychology, identifies tourism studies applying them and discusses key areas for future research. The paper aims to demonstrate the usefulness of cognitive psychology for understanding why tourists and particularly pleasure travellers demonstrate the behaviour they exhibit.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews 165 papers from the cognitive psychology and literature regarding pleasure travel related to consciousness, mindfulness, flow, retrospection, prospection, attention, schema and memory, feelings and emotions. The papers are chosen to demonstrate the state of the art of the literature and provide guidance on how these concepts are vital for further research.FindingsThe paper demonstrates that research has favoured a behaviourist rather than cognitive approach to the study of hedonic travel. Cognitive psychology can help to understand the mental processes connecting perception of stimuli with behaviour. Numerous examples are provided: top-down and bottom-up attention processes help to understand advertising effectiveness, theories of consciousness and memory processes help to distinguish between lived and recalled experience, cognitive appraisal theory predicts the emotion elicited based on a small number of appraisal dimensions such as surprise and goals, knowledge of the mental organisation of autobiographical memory and schema support understanding of destination image formation and change and the effect of storytelling on decision-making, reconstructive bias in prospection or retrospection about a holiday inform the study of pleasurable experience. These findings indicate need for further cognitive psychology research in tourism generally and studies of holiday travel experiences.Research limitations/implicationsThis review is limited to cognitive psychology and excludes psychoanalytic studies.Practical implicationsCognitive psychology provides insight into key areas of practical importance. In general, the use of a cognitive approach allows further understanding of leisure tourists’ behaviour. The concept of attention is vital to understand destination advertising effectiveness, biases in memory process help to understand visitor satisfaction and experience design and so on. Use of cognitive psychology theory will lead to better practical outcomes for tourists seeking pleasurable experiences and destination managers.Originality valueThis is the first review that examines the application of concepts from cognitive psychology to the study of leisure tourism in particular. The concepts studied are also applicable to study of travellers generally.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of cultural intelligence (CQ) and emotional intelligence (EI) on a tour leader’s adjustment in a different cultural environment. Data were collected from 330 outgoing tour leaders in Tehran, Iran. The construct validity was confirmed by using confirmatory factor analysis. The data were analyzed using correlation analysis and path analysis to test the effect of CQ on cross-cultural adjustment, and the moderating effect of EI on the relationship between CQ and cross-cultural adjustment. The results showed that CQ had a positive effect on cross-cultural adjustment. In addition, we found that CQ had a positive effect on EI. The findings of the research showed that emotional intelligence in not significantly the mediator variable.Emotional intelligence has a positive and significant effect on cross-cultural adjustment. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge in the field of CQ and cross-cultural research, and it provides practical implications for individuals seeking to improvetheir cross-cultural effectiveness, enhancing their cultural intelligence and emotionalintelligence, specifically in tourism industry. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Extended Abstract : In order to study the relationship between Tehran’s outgoing tour leaders’ cultural intelligence (CQ) and their emotional intelligence (EI)¡ data were collected from 330 outgoing tour leaders. The correlation analysis was used to test the relationship between CQ and EI and the construct validity was confirmed by using confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that CQ had a positive effect on EI. Besides¡ the hypothesis testing showed that there is a causal relationship between CQ and EI. The results of the study showed 31% of the outgoing tour leaders’ EI can be defined through CQ. By improving the tour leaders’ CQ¡ their EI could be improved subsequently. An outgoing tour leader with high CQ and EI¡ as a representative of a group of tourists¡ can improve the relationship between the tourists and the host community. Introduction: With the globalizing trend and highlighting the international interactions¡ personal relations with different cultural backgrounds become more and more important. One of the important factors that give rise to understanding and tolerance in multicultural environments is cultural intelligence. Today¡ psychologists consider emotional intelligence as an important characteristic difference along with scientific intelligence and contend that these differences can directly influence people’s ability of communication and thus their whole lives. Emotional intelligence is the people’s ability y to express their individual emotions and to understand other people’s emotions (Law et al.¡ 2004). With the increasing interest of politicians in non-oil revenue¡ tourism industry has received much more attention in the recent years. Considering the industry’s great potential to increase income¡ employment and foreign exchange earnings¡ and due to the little economic leakage¡ many of the policy makers try to replace the oil income with what the lucrative tourism industry can offer. This project aims to study the relationship between cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence among outgoing tour guides of city of Tehran¡ Iran. This research project aims to offer solutions and clues to tour guides in general and outgoing tour guides of Tehran in particular so that they would successfully control the challenges of cultural differences. Materials And Methods: Earley and Ang (2003) are believed to be the first who introduced the concept of cultural intelligence. They defined cultural intelligence (CQ) as the ability to learn new patterns in cultural interactions and provide correct behavioral responses to these patterns. Cultural intelligence is¡ in fact¡ the ability to produce interactive and effective reactions to those people who are from various cultural backgrounds. Cultural intelligence enables people to recognize cultural differences through knowledge and understanding and behave appropriately in the face of different cultures (Van Dyne & Ang¡ 2005). Salovey and Mayer (1990) first introduced emotional intelligence and defined emotional intelligence as a kind of social intelligence¡ which enables an individual to observe others’ actions¡ differentiates between different emotions and channels one’s thoughts and actions using this information (Salovey & Mayer¡ 1990). This research is an applied one based on the aim of the study and the data were collected through questionnaires. The normality of data was achieved with the help of Kolmogorov-Smirnov¡ to investigate a significant relationship between variables¡ Pearson correlation coefficient was used and to test the causal relationship between variables¡ modeling structural equation was used. Results: To test the normality of data distribution¡ Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used. The level of significance for cultural intelligence variable is 0.329 which is bigger than 0.05 and therefore this variable is normal. The results of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test for Emotional Intelligence was 0.384 which is bigger than 0.05 and therefore this variable is normal. As the results indicate¡ there is a positive and significant relation between cultural intelligence and Emotional Intelligence (SigStructural equation modeling was used to test hypothesis and study the causal relation between variables. The results show that tour leaders'' cultural intelligence has a significant relation with their emotional intelligence. According to t statistical figure¡ cultural intelligence variable in the certainty level of 99% has a positive and significant effect on emotional intelligence. The relation between these two variables is a linear and direct one. Therefore¡ when tour leaders'' cultural intelligence improves and changes¡ their emotional intelligence increases. R equals 0.31. Thus¡ cultural intelligence variable could predict 31% of changes of tour leaders'' emotional intelligence. Conclusion: The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence. According to the results¡ outgoing tour leaders’ cultural intelligence has a significant relationship with their emotional intelligence. Besides¡ the Structural equation modeling shows that cultural intelligence variable could predict 31% of changes of tour leaders'' emotional intelligence. The results of this study confirm the findings of the previous research by Moon (2010). The results of this study show by improving cultural intelligence¡ a tour leader’s emotional intelligence will be improved and these leaders can understand other cultures better and make a better communication with the host community. Therefore such leaders can understand their own feelings and others’ feelings better and manage them in a better way which leads to the improvement of the relationship between a tour leader and the host community. So it is predicted to pay more attention to the factors which affect the quality of relationships in an industry¡ in which inter-cultural relations are of much importance