A Conceptual Framework for Applying Social Signal Processing to Neuro-Tourism

Abstract

Social Signal Processing is a new research field aiming at providing computers with the ability to understand human social signals, i.e., (dis)agreement, amusement, etc. Social signals are manifested through an array of nonverbal behavioral cues, such as gestures, postures. Neuro-tourism is an idea that combines the fields of Neuroscience and Tourism. Neuroscience, marketing, and computing methods like as Electroencephalography (EEG), Analysis of Physiological Responses, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Eye-tracking, among others, enable us to monitor tourists’ emotions, decision-making processes, and behavior. We claim that neuro-tourism in combination with Social Signal Processing Techniques, more efficiently explores the tourists’ behaviors/preferences when they are browsing webpages or even when they are traveling. In this paper, we propose a Conceptual Framework for applying Social Signal Processing to Neuro-Tourism. The proposed Conceptual Framework takes into consideration various application areas within Tourism field and constitutes a roadmap of analyzing/exploiting social signals produced during social interactions or human–computer interactions.