‘I Feel like I Am in That Place and I Would like to See More’: Aesthetic and Embodiment Components of Tourist Destination Image

Photographs of places are cognitive sources that provide the observer with a first, essential impression of a potential tourist destination, before the observer visits that place. Recent evidence suggests that aesthetic qualities of a tourist destination may affect tourists’ experience and satisfaction, contributing to their loyalty toward a destination and intention to return. Drawing upon the literature on sensorimotor processes of aesthetic experience of arts, here, we investigated whether embodiment and aesthetic qualities of landscape photos might play a role in people’s aesthetic preference and willingness to visit a tourist destination. One-hundred twenty-one participants (Mage = 22.17, SD = 6.25) completed an online survey, which asked to evaluate a series of landscapes according to subjective ratings of presence, exploration, and completion, that is the intention to explore beyond the represented place (embodiment dimensions), as well as of symmetry. Furthermore, participants rated how much they liked each destination (Liking) and how much they would like to visit that place (Tourist judgment). Convolutional neural networks (CNN) of image features (Symmetry, Variance and Self-similarity) were also analyzed to rule out the effects of these features on the 2 types of judgment. Results showed that embodiment components predicted both Liking and Tourist judgements. In contrast, neither subjective Symmetry nor CNN measures predicted any of the 2 Liking and Tourist judgements. Overall, our findings support a novel theoretical framework of tourist aesthetic judgment, whereby sensorimotor mechanisms might play a role in tourist destination choice.