What kind of UGA is effective for heritage tourism marketing? Matching effects of human elements and review types

Elaboration likelihood model (ELM)

Elaboration likelihood model (ELM) is proposed by Petty and Cacioppo (1986). This theory is a dual-path model of individual persuasion effectiveness and attitude formation and change. According to the model, the change of individual attitude is mainly affected by two information processing paths: the central path and the edge path. Among them, on the central path, individual motivation is to process information within the scope of their ability to influence their behavioural willingness by considering information arguments and evaluating the attributes of arguments. However, individuals who process information through the edge path pay less attention to the quality of the information itself, and pay more attention to the environmental characteristics of the information in order to judge and evaluate the target (Sanford 2006). At the moment, ELM has been widely used in the field of research information technology (Shahin et al. 2020), advertising (Deng et al. 2021) and social media (Lam et al. 2022), and the field of e-commerce (Balakrishnan et al. 2023). ELM can explain the influence mechanism of different information clues on users’ attitudes, and help managers better formulate effective strategies (Wei and Lu 2013). Therefore, this study believes that ELM can better understand the user-generated graphic advertisements, so as to explore the matching effect of human elements and comment types on the online interaction behaviour of potential tourists.

User-generated advertising (UGA)

Online tourism advertising is a crucial means for tourists to gather information about various tourism destinations and potential tourists’ online interactive behaviours. As tourists use online platforms on a daily basis, UGA plays a significant role in effectively promoting tourism destinations and enticing potential tourists. UGA refers to the travel experience evaluation generated and shared by text, pictures, and videos on online platforms, such as online travel recommendations, tourism destination evaluations, and tourist reviews (Wang et al. 2022). Different from traditional tourism advertising, UGA is generated by tourists. Its information source is unique and more authentic and credible than traditional advertising types (Wang et al. 2022).

Most UGA studies have explored the different types of advertising, production motivations, influencing factors and mechanisms, and overall impacts on audiences. First, UGA can be categorised into three levels, ranging from low to high: consumption, contribution, and creation (Muntinga et al. 2011). Meanwhile, consumers can be divided into two categories according to their engagement: consumers motivated by recommendations and rewards and self-driven consumers (Berthon et al. 2008). Furthermore, motivation and influencing factors research has pointed out that UGA motivation can be categorised into intrinsic, extrinsic, rational and emotional motivations (Martinez-Navarro and Bigne 2022). Inner satisfaction, personal growth, and a desire to challenge existing ideas drive UGA. Users participate in the cocreation process with the brand to enhance their motivations (Shulga et al. 2023). Previous studies have indicated that UGA can increase consumer loyalty and trust (Busser and Shulga 2019) and enhance potential consumer participation behaviour (Guo and Jiang 2023; Lu et al. 2020; Wang et al. 2022).

In heritage tourism research, UGA can have multiple benefits. First, it can greatly increase potential tourists’ desires to travel (Gursoy et al. 2022; Mehmood et al. 2018). Additionally, UGA contributes to enhancing tourists’ positive emotions and realises the effective promotion of heritage tourism projects (Vu et al. 2018). Based on this, UGA produces many achievements. However, existing research primarily focuses on UGA advantages but lacks exploration of the effects of UGA content elements and structures. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct research on UGA content expression and marketing formats to enhance UGA marketing effectiveness. Additionally, images and texts are considered important pieces of information for UGA, with human elements being a tool to create a specific atmosphere (Herath et al. 2020; Wijesinghe et al. 2020). The review types can express tourists’ evaluation of heritage sites (Yan et al. 2020). However, research analysing the matching effect between human elements and review types in UGA from the perspective of potential tourists is limited. Thus, this study examines the interactive effects of human elements and review types on potential tourists’ online interactive behaviours in heritage tourism to further address the research gaps from the perspective of graphic-text matching.

Heritage tourism

Cultural heritage is the precious wealth left by human ancestors to future generations, carrying the genes and blood of human civilisation (Lee et al. 2016). With the upgrading of global tourism consumption, more and more heritage sites carry out heritage tourism activities, thereby creating more regional tourism experiences (Gardiner and Scott 2018). Heritage tourism refers to the tourism form that utilises the unique cultural assets of a destination (e.g., architecture, religion, and cuisine) to transform historical and cultural assets into commodities to attract tourists (Zhang et al. 2023b). The total number of global tourists will reach 12.673 billion, and the global tourism revenue will reach 5.54 trillion US dollars, and tourism modes such as heritage tourism and rural tourism are becoming an important driving force for global economic growth. Meanwhile, as a significant form of cultural heritage conservation, heritage tourism has gradually become an essential component of the global tourism industry and has received significant attention from scholars (Ji et al. 2023). Research has shown that the behaviours and concepts of tourists and residents, as important participants in heritage tourism, are the focus of current research in this field (Ji et al. 2023; Liang et al. 2023; Luo et al. 2022; Zhang et al. 2023b). With the deepening of research on heritage tourism, its economic, cultural, and social value has received widespread attention, bringing cultural heritage conservation and tourism development research into the mainstream (Ancuta and Jucu 2023; Guo and Jiang 2023; Zhang et al. 2023b).

Heritage tourism as an important form of tourism, its marketing strategy is different from that of traditional tourism, which needs to pay more attention to culture, history and regional characteristics. Therefore, accurate advertising marketing is an important way to promote the sustainable development of heritage tourism (Miao et al. 2021). The existing research on heritage tourism marketing can be divided into the following three aspects. (1) Intelligent technology and experiential marketing. The development of intelligent technology has brought new opportunities for the experiential marketing of heritage tourism. Exploring the mechanism of AR technology on tourists’ immersive experience is an important part of current research on heritage tourism marketing (Cranmer et al. 2023). (2) Sustainable development and brand building. In the marketing of heritage tourism, tourism destinations often need to pay attention to the protection and management of cultural heritage, and enhance their image and reputation in the eyes of tourists through brand building. Therefore, research on heritage tourism brand building is helpful to improve tourists’ experience and increase the popularity and attractiveness of destinations (Qiu and Zuo 2023). (3) Social media and digital marketing. Tourism agencies and destination managers use social media platforms to showcase historical sites, cultural attractions and local activities to attract more visitors’ attention and participation (Lin and Rasoolimanesh 2023). At present, more and more heritage sites encourage visitors to share tourism information on various mobile social media such as Facebook, Little Red Book, Dianping and Hornet’s Nest, which is gradually becoming a must-read travel material for many potential tourists to choose tourist destinations (Gursoy et al. 2022). However, from the perspective of theoretical research, the relevant researches on social media and digital marketing are not deep enough, especially the researches on the graphic elements and matching effects of existing user-generated advertisements are still few, which is difficult to meet the realistic demand of revealing the influence of graphic matching on the marketing effect of heritage tourism advertising from the theoretical level. Therefore, user-generated advertising marketing can open new ways to explore potential visitors’ perceptions of heritage tourism experiences (Basaraba 2022; Gursoy et al. 2022), and further highlight the unique features of heritage sites through the graphic features of advertisements.

The impact of human elements and review types on online interactive behaviours

In the realm of UGA heritage tourism, online interactive behaviours, as a special kind of participation behaviour, refer to user-generated graphic-text advertising and other types of information released by enterprises through social media. Potential tourists can interact with tourism companies through reviews, reposts and likes (Basaraba 2022; Gursoy et al. 2022). Meanwhile, some scholars have found that the more informative online advertising is and the more accurate it is in describing and displaying products or brands, the more users can establish a positive attitude and obtain users’ likes and comments (Labrecque 2014). As a new online media marketing method, different types of graphic-text UGA trigger different imagination and behavioural intentions of potential tourists (Wang and Chen 2018). As important visual content in pictures, human elements are considered to be an important tool marketing organisations use to create specific atmospheres and myths. Human elements include 2 categories: with and without human elements (Zhang et al. 2023b). The text review types effectively reflect tourists’ evaluation and experience sharing of the heritage site (Yan et al. 2020). This is because user reviews are tourists’ evaluation of heritage tourism culture and their sharing of heritage tourism experience. Therefore, this study divides the review types into cultural attributes and subjective experiences (Huang et al. 2013; Luan et al. 2016).

Schema theory believes that there is a significant interaction between images and text (Xu et al. 2008). The visual properties of graphics and related text processing can interfere with or promote each other (Stroop 1992). Meanwhile, according to the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), the user information processing modes include central routes and peripheral routes (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). In the central route, users can mobilise their rational thinking and be convinced by the specific attribute information the product provides. In the peripheral route, users are more affected by factors other than specific attribute information, such as the style and format of the message and recipient mood (Zhou et al. 2023). When potential tourists come into contact with UGA, they choose the degree of information processing based on factors such as their information content and their own information processing ability. When the text combination and text information match, it elevates potential tourists’ emotions and then forms positive behaviours (Wang and Chen 2018).

For graphics with human elements, potential tourists show stronger online interaction behaviour for subjective experience text review types than for cultural attribute text review types. Graphics of human elements contain richer experiential information (Alamäki et al. 2022; Joe et al. 2021). Subjective experience reviews refer to tourists’ subjective or emotional evaluation of heritage tourism and other experience information, which reflects tourists’ overall evaluation of heritage tourism (Huang et al. 2013). Based on the ELM, edge routes are heuristic cues that are obvious to individuals (Shiau et al. 2022). Therefore, graphics with human elements and subjective experience text reviews convey the description of experience information about heritage tourism sites. The peripheral route can stimulate the audience to think about the information content and stimulate potential tourists’ interests (Yan et al. 2024), thereby improving user assessment and actively promoting their behaviours.

For graphics without human elements, potential tourists showed stronger interactive behaviours with cultural attribute text reviews than with subjective experience text reviews. Graphics without human elements can better convey the specific attributes of heritage tourism sites (Alamäki et al. 2022; Joe et al. 2021). The cultural attribute text review introduces tourists to the cultural connotation and other attribute information of heritage tourism, which reflects tourists’ cultural heritage evaluation. Based on the fine processing possibility model, the central path is a parameter and cue that requires the user’s careful consideration and requires that the information receiver invest more cognitive energy (Shiau et al. 2022). Therefore, the matching of graphics without human elements and cultural attribute text reviews can enable users to think about graphic information through the central route. It is conducive to stimulating the rational thinking of the audience, thus strengthening the processing fluency of the audience and improving user evaluation (Song and Schwarz 2009). The following hypotheses are proposed:

H1: Matching human elements and review types in user-generated graphic-text advertising prompts tourists to have higher online interactive behaviours.

H1a: For UGA with human elements in the graphics, subjective experience (vs. cultural attribute) text reviews lead to higher online interactive behaviours.

H1b: For UGA graphics without human elements, cultural attribute text reviews (vs. subjective experience text reviews) lead to higher online interactive behaviours.

The mediating roles of psychological distance and awe

UGA can trigger emotional and cognitive responses from the audience (Wang et al. 2022), while scholars consider psychological distance and awe to be important emotional factors that affect tourists’ behaviour in heritage tourism (Massara and Severino 2013; Su et al. 2020a). Therefore, from cognitive and emotive perspectives, this study speculates that psychological distance and awe can mediate graphic-text UGA between external stimuli and online interactive behaviours.

Psychological distance is based on individual psychology and can be used to judge the subjective feeling of distance between things and oneself (Massara and Severino 2013; Trope et al. 2007). When human elements and subjective experience text reviews appear in user-generated advertising, they can present the specific subjective experience process of heritage tourism to the audience. By taking the peripheral route, it is helpful for potential tourists to comprehend graphical information content. This strengthens the processing fluency of the audience, effectively reducing the user’s reaction time (Yan et al. 2024). Ultimately, the psychological distance from the destination is narrowed (Kim and Song 2019). It is conducive to improving users’ sharing behaviour by narrowing the psychological distance between potential tourists and heritage sites, thus affecting advertising effects (Tan and Hsu 2023). Therefore, this study finds that the review type of pictures with human elements is compared with that of cultural attribute text reviews. The review type of potential tourists’ subjective experience text reviews can affect their online interactive behaviours through psychological distance. The following hypotheses are proposed:

H2: For UGA with human elements in the graphic, the effect of subjective experience text reviews on online interactive behaviours is positively mediated by psychological distance.

Moreover, awe is the sense of surprise one experiences in the face of something broad, grand, and beyond the scope of current understanding. Cultural heritage fully embodies the infinite wisdom of ancient people and often looks majestic to tourists. When tourists appreciate ancient cultural heritage, people feel humble, small and in awe (Tan and Hsu 2023). Therefore, when UGA graphics without human elements are matched with cultural attribute text reviews, historical information about cultural heritage is conveyed. This fully shows the core cultural features of heritage tourism. External cultural heritage can stimulate tourists, make them realise the insignificance of human beings and give them a sense of awe (Gursoy et al. 2022), and promote the generation of user behaviour (Su et al. 2020a). Existing studies have proven that when users feel the awe brought about by heritage tourism, they can improve the positive behavioural intentions of potential tourists (Lu et al. 2015). It may stimulate their behaviour involving forwarding, reviewing or liking heritage tourism attribute information. Therefore, we find that for pictures without human elements, compared with the subjective experience text review type, the review type of cultural attribute text reviews of potential tourists influences their online interactive behaviours through the mediating role of awe. Thus, this study proposes the following hypotheses.

H3: For UGA without human elements in the graphic, the effect of cultural attribute text reviews on online interactive behaviours is positively mediated by awe.

This study selected 3 Chinese World Heritage sites in Quanzhou, Fujian: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China and the Kaiyuan Temple, Qingjing Mosque, and Chengqi Earth Building in Fujian Tulou as the research scenarios. We used three scenario experiments to test the hypotheses. Studies 1 and 2 tested the matching effect of human elements and review types in UGA and its impacts on potential tourists’ online interactive behaviours. We conducted two experiments to strengthen the experiments’ external validity. Study 3 aims to examine the mediating effects of psychological distance and awe. Its research objects were recruited from the Credamo platform ( Figure 1 presents the theoretical model of this study.

Theoretical model of this study.