Information Communications Technology (ICT) and Tourism Experience: Can Serotonin become a measurement for tourism experience?

Authors

  • Xuan Tran University of West Florida
  • Ha Tran Florida International Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
  • Tram Tran Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University & Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health

Keywords:

serotonin evaluation, power, affiliation

Abstract

The fact that tourist evaluations are different for the same service quality creates difficulties for tourism business in benchmarking their ranking standard. The present study examines the difference of tourists’ evaluations through the serotonin concept.  Serotonin (5-HT) is a neurotransmitter to play a key role in inhibiting aggression and regulating mood. Inhibiting aggression implies decreasing power motive and regulating mood implies increasing affiliation motive. The two study hypotheses are (1) an increase in serotonin would increase friendliness and (2) a decrease in serotonin would increase anger. Serotonin levels were scored by evaluation rate of 14340 hotel guests for two years (2015-2016) and Linguistic Inquiry Word Count was used to score affiliation and power motives. Findings indicate that a tourist with a high serotonin evaluation would possess affiliation resulting in overestimate service quality and a tourist with low serotonin evaluation would have a power resulting in underestimate service quality

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Published

2018-02-05

How to Cite

Tran, X., Tran, H. and Tran, T. (2018) “Information Communications Technology (ICT) and Tourism Experience: Can Serotonin become a measurement for tourism experience?”, e-Review of Tourism Research. Available at: https://ertr-ojs-tamu.tdl.org/ertr/article/view/118 (Accessed: 28 March 2024).