Emotional and cognitive responses to cultural heritage: a neuromarketing experiment using virtual reality in the tourist destination image model context

Abstract

The research is driven to identify and measure, through electroencephalography the impact of cultural and architectural heritage emulated by virtual reality on the mind of a tourist, in the form of cognitive and emotional responses measured as brain waves, identifies, through electroencephalogram, the cognitive and the emotional responses by subjects immersed in cultural tourist destination virtual reality, takes as conceptual framework the tourist destination image model and focus on tourist destinations characterised by historical, cultural, and architectural heritage. A neuromarketing experiment is caried out in which the cognitive and affective responses can be observed and measured using alpha α and beta β brain bioelectric waves, the data obtained directly from the human brain is used to carry out an analysis using the partial least squares regression algorithm PLS. The results show that the cognitive and emotional response caused by the tourist destination cultural heritage through virtual reality in individuals, is positive.