From Who They Are to How They Feel: Profiling Emotions in Coastal Tourism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53596/nn73gy52Keywords:
emotional experience; tourists profiling; beach tourism; Plutchik’s emotional framework; affective events theoryAbstract
Positive emotional experiences play invaluable roles in advancing tourism sustainability by fostering deeper visitor engagement, loyalty, and favourable destination revisit intentions. This study examines how user profiles and travel-related characteristics shape visitors’ emotional experiences at coastal destinations. Drawing on 602 beach visitors surveyed in Ghana, Ordinary Least Squares regression and Independent Samples T-test were used to assess the differences and predictive influence of visitors’ age, gender, education, income, origin, travel purpose, visit type, length of stay, and travel party on seven emotional constructs: awe, joy, calmness, affective attachment, love-affection, sadness, and regret. The results indicate that positive (joy, calmness, love-affection, awe) and reflexive (attachment) emotions are significantly influenced by higher income, tertiary education, leisure travel, and longer stays, whereas negative emotions (regret, sadness), although less prevalent, are associated with younger age, lower income, and shorter visits. The results contribute to the theoretical explanations of emotional variability in tourism and offer insights for designing emotionally resonating and inclusive coastal tourism experiences that enhance destination satisfaction. Identifying key affective drivers will provide destination managers with tools for tailoring experience designs to diverse visitor profiles while advancing emotion research by providing evidence from an underexplored West African context that highlights the affective dimensions of coastal tourism experience.
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