Movie genre effects on destination image, place familiarity, and visitation interest among undergraduate students: A film tourism study

This pretest-posttest experiment explored the effects of genre on cognitive destination image, affective destination image, place familiarity, and visitation interest with regard to a single destination placed within multiple movies in order to contribute to the growing field of film tourism. The experiment consisted of four genre treatment groups---action, comedy, drama, and horror---and a control group. Participants completed a post-survey both immediately after the experiment and two weeks after viewing the films. Mean score differences between the pre-survey and the two post-surveys were analyzed using paired sample t-tests for within-group analyses. MANOVA was employed for between-group analyses.;Findings were mixed. Within-group analyses indicated that exposure to a horror film can have negative effects on the dependent variables but did not provide compelling evidence that exposure to the other genres studied effect the dependent variables. However, there was also evidence that some of the negative effects demonstrated by the horror group begin to dissipate after only two weeks. Further, there was evidence that all genre groups and the control group experienced increased feelings of familiarity with the destination at both post-survey points in time. Between-group analyses, using data from the first post-survey, suggested that the mean composite scores for cognitive destination image and affective destination image for the horror treatment group were statistically significantly negative compared to the control and action groups. However, there was again evidence that the negative effects may dissipate in only two weeks. Between-group analyses, using data from the second post-survey, found no statistically significant difference in any mean composite scores for any of the study groups.