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Tourism as a field of scholarly enquiry is informed from a range of different disciplinary perspectives, with psychology arguably one of the most intensly studied. Existing studies in tourism psychology, have tend to adopt a behavioural approach, leaving our understanding of the mental processes that underpin behaviour potentially underexplored and thus, conceptually underdeveloped. Theory from cognitive psychology, specifically Cognitive Appraisal Theory (CAT), presents potential to provide conceptual clarity of the antecedents of memorable tourism experiences (MTEs), a phenomenon of growing interest among tourism scholars. Subsequently, this thesis uses the process of cognitive appraisal to explore the memorability of tourism experiences, with particularly reference to the role of novelty in eliciting emotion., A constructivist approach was selected, consisting of two sequential stages of qualitative research. Stage One consisted of a series of semi-structured interviews with 25 participants, with 75 recalled episodes of novelty in MTEs. Stage Two utilised the social media platform WeChat, to further explore episodes of novelty and connection to emotion through sustained interaction with participants. WeChat mediated research resulted in the collection, coding and subsequent analysis of over 100 additional stories. Core findings from this research, detailed through a series of interconnected manuscripts, are outlined in the summary presented below., Analysis determined episodes of novelty can be re-evaluated through an ongoing process of cognitive appraisal during the recollection phase of the tourist experience. In addition, subsequent engagement with the eipsodes of novelty led to the proposition that the cognitive appraisal of novelty can be reconstructed from past emotional experiences, which are subject to change over time due to memory bias and distortion. Results identified goals are a critical driver of novelty, rather than dreams or fantasies. Connected to this, analysis determined that bottom up attention guided by goals and beliefs, plays a critical role in the appraisal of novelty due to the capacity of goals to guide future decision making and elicit emotions. Importantly, analysis highlighted the capacity of novelty to stimulate interactions between the different memory systems, both short- and long-term. Analysis of novelty elicited through the process of cognitive appraisal, generated conceptual guidance on how novelty, through the elicitation of emotion, facilitates memorability of the tourism experiences through long-term memory system and connection with emotions and goals. The findings above led to an important and timely contribution of this research, namely, the ability to conceptually distinguish novelty, surprise and unexpectedness in the context of the process of cognitive appraisal. Future studies should consider the role of emotional valence of MTE’s, specifically negative experiences and how these are re-evaluated overtime.

The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the education sector has received considerable attention from scholars; however, its potency and application among tourism learners are yet to be discerned. Accordingly, this research note articulates the potential impact and limitations of the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in tourism education practices. In particular, the paper aims to raise awareness among tourism educators regarding the disruptive potential of ChatGPT and its impact on academic integrity and ethics. This paper contributes to tourism education practices on AI and robotics by critically discussing ChatGPT from a cognitive science perspective and providing recommendations on how to minimise AI plagiarism in tourism education. This research argues for adapting novel pedagogies as technology evolves and raises the need for AI ethical use guidelines in tourism education. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

PurposeThis review aims to discuss concepts and theories from cognitive psychology, identifies tourism studies applying them and discusses key areas for future research. The paper aims to demonstrate the usefulness of cognitive psychology for understanding why tourists and particularly pleasure travellers demonstrate the behaviour they exhibit.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews 165 papers from the cognitive psychology and literature regarding pleasure travel related to consciousness, mindfulness, flow, retrospection, prospection, attention, schema and memory, feelings and emotions. The papers are chosen to demonstrate the state of the art of the literature and provide guidance on how these concepts are vital for further research.FindingsThe paper demonstrates that research has favoured a behaviourist rather than cognitive approach to the study of hedonic travel. Cognitive psychology can help to understand the mental processes connecting perception of stimuli with behaviour. Numerous examples are provided: top-down and bottom-up attention processes help to understand advertising effectiveness, theories of consciousness and memory processes help to distinguish between lived and recalled experience, cognitive appraisal theory predicts the emotion elicited based on a small number of appraisal dimensions such as surprise and goals, knowledge of the mental organisation of autobiographical memory and schema support understanding of destination image formation and change and the effect of storytelling on decision-making, reconstructive bias in prospection or retrospection about a holiday inform the study of pleasurable experience. These findings indicate need for further cognitive psychology research in tourism generally and studies of holiday travel experiences.Research limitations/implicationsThis review is limited to cognitive psychology and excludes psychoanalytic studies.Practical implicationsCognitive psychology provides insight into key areas of practical importance. In general, the use of a cognitive approach allows further understanding of leisure tourists’ behaviour. The concept of attention is vital to understand destination advertising effectiveness, biases in memory process help to understand visitor satisfaction and experience design and so on. Use of cognitive psychology theory will lead to better practical outcomes for tourists seeking pleasurable experiences and destination managers.Originality valueThis is the first review that examines the application of concepts from cognitive psychology to the study of leisure tourism in particular. The concepts studied are also applicable to study of travellers generally.