Heuristics and Emotions in Tourist Destination Selection: A Review and Research Directions

The rational choice assumption dominates most research on the decision-making process in the tourism field. As human beings, tourists have limited cognitive abilities, limited time, and a large amount of information, resulting in irrational decisions and cognitive biases. Tourism research in tourist decision-making concerning cognitive biases is still in its initial phase. This study aims to investigate state-of-the-art research regarding the role of heuristics in tourist destination selection to explore its research opportunities, focusing on destination image and emotions. Destination image is an alternative heuristic indication for selecting a destination, which can be based on emotions as specific feelings. This study applied a systematic literature review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol to select the reviewed literature. The review involved seventeen documents, covering journal articles and a conference paper from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. Investigation using a structured review framework of theory, context, and methods in this study revealed that most researchers use several relevant theories related to behavioural economics and psychology discipline to conduct empirical research in the context of a general destination. Furthermore, this study discusses the advantages and dark side of exploiting emotions in selecting a destination and provides future research directions.

JEL classification: D91, M31, Z32