From attention to emotion: a systematic review of neuroscientific approaches in tourism advertising

Traditional tourism advertising research has long relied on self-report measures, which struggle to capture the implicit processes—attention, emotional arousal, and cognitive load—that unfold automatically and often outside conscious awareness. Could neuroscientific methods such as eye-tracking and EEG help bridge this gap? This systematic review takes stock of the field and proposes an integrative framework linking neurometric indicators to behavioral outcomes in tourism advertising.

How the research was done

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of 37 peer-reviewed studies in English (articles, book chapters, reviews, conference papers) published between 2012 and 2025 in the Scopus database. The review followed the SPAR-4-SLR protocol, with each study evaluated for methodological rigor and its deployment of the neuroscientific approach. Studies from disciplines outside the core focus of tourism advertising (e.g., physics, engineering, medicine, agriculture, mathematics, biochemistry) were excluded to ensure conceptual relevance.

What the research found

Tourism advertising researchers are increasingly relying on neuroscientific techniques such as eye-tracking (the most frequently used, in 31 studies), EEG (7 studies), and multimodal physiological measurements including electrodermal activity, facial electromyography, heart rate, and skin conductance (3 studies). These methods have primarily been deployed to examine attention, cognitive processing, and emotional responses toward visual and narrative advertising stimuli, and their effects on consumer perceptions and behavioral intentions. However, the literature remains theoretically fragmented, with many neuroscientific studies adopting an exploratory approach that lacks explicit and coherent theoretical grounding. Studies are concentrated in a small number of countries (notably China, Spain, and Australia), and the field is dispersed across journals from tourism, marketing, psychology, and neuroscience.

Insights for the industry

The review proposes a holistic conceptual framework in which visual and narrative features of advertising stimuli first activate perceptual attention systems (captured through eye-tracking indicators like fixation duration and gaze patterns), which then evoke cognitive and emotional responses (measured through EEG, GSR, and facial expression analysis), and finally translate into behavioral and attitudinal outcomes such as recall, destination image formation, and visit intention. For destination marketing organizations and advertising agencies, the practical message is to move beyond intuition-driven creative decisions toward evidence-based design—deliberately engineering advertising content to guide visual attention using structured layouts, focal cues, and storytelling sequences. Neuroscientific indicators should be treated as diagnostic tools that complement traditional measures, enabling more predictive and adaptive decision-making and helping practitioners refine campaigns in real time.