Do first impressions matter? Effect of first impressions on tourists’ destination choice: an event-related potential study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Traditional methods rarely give a fully understanding of tourists’ first impression of destination images and how it affects their subsequent destination choice behaviour. In addition, the first impression response and subsequent destination choice behaviour of tourists by tourist images have not yet been investigated electrophysiologically. Hence event-related potentials (ERPs) were applied to explore the study of the brain activity induced by tourists’ first impression and destination choice behaviour when viewing images of different types of tourist destinations. The results found that (1) Tourists’ first impression formation is associated with N1, N2 and P2 components produced by brain activity. (2) There are significant differences in the neural mechanism of tourists’ first impressions of the aesthetic emotional response to both images of the ‘natural’ and ‘built’ environment and images that they ‘like’ and ‘dislike’. (3) P2 and P3 components are associated with tourists’ destination choice, with destination ‘choice’ photos having a higher amplitude than destination ‘reject’ photos in the P3 component. (4) Good first impressions are positively correlated with destination choice behaviour. This study explores the electrophysiological activity of destination image perception and choice behaviour, and the results can act as an evaluating indicator of destination marketing.