Description
The use of neuroscientific methods and technologies has been gaining prominence in scientific research in recent years, aligning with the development of smart technologies. The fields of tourism and hospitality are no exception. These technologies and methods encompass various tools such as heart rate monitoring, electroencephalography (EEG), galvanic skin response (GSR), skin conductance, facial electromyography (EMG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), eye tracking, face reader technology, facial expression analysis, and electrodermal activity monitoring.
A systematic literature review emerges as a suitable approach for addressing the three research inquiries, as it has the capacity to pinpoint pertinent scientific studies while ensuring the reliability of data gathering and analysis (Snyder, 2019). This section delineates, elucidates, and presents the study's methodology using a flow diagram to uphold the requisite transparency and replicability (Atkinson et al., 2015; Shamseer et al., 2015; Snyder, 2019). To conduct the systematic review, we adopted a modified version of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework (Moher et al., 2009), executed in five sequential steps: (1) initiation of data extraction through a preliminary and main search to identify pertinent publications based on a specified search criteria, (2) detection and elimination of duplicates, (3) initial screening of titles and abstracts employing predefined selection criteria derived from the research questions, (4) subsequent screening of the retained publications, and (5) a backward search utilizing the publications retained from the second screening. These five procedural steps are elaborated upon further in the subsequent sections and are depicted in a flow diagram presented in Fig. 1.
Data extraction was executed utilizing the Scopus database due to its comprehensive coverage of highly esteemed tourism journals, aligning with established publication standards. The search commenced with a meticulously crafted query, encompassing terms related to tourism ("touris" OR "hotel") and various neuroscientific methods ("Heart rate," "Electroencephalography," "Galvanic skin response," "Skin Conductance," "Facial Electromyography," "Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging," "Eye tracking," "Face Reader," "Facial expression," "Electrodermal activity"), constrained to journal sources in their final publication stage and written in English. This query yielded a total of 507 results, including articles, books, and conference papers, with 483 articles meeting the language criteria. Subsequently, stringent inclusion criteria were applied, including the restriction to articles only, exclusion of conference papers, book reviews, editorials, and books, resulting in 296 papers. Following a comprehensive review of abstracts, literature-based reviews unrelated to empirical investigations were eliminated (4), as were manuscripts outside the scope of the study focusing on biology, medicine and forest domain leaving a final selection of 121 articles pertinent to the research objectives.
According to the preliminary findings, we identified the relevant research topics of empirical studies that apply neuroscientific methods and smart experiences technologies to tourism and hospitality, the prominent authors that apply neuroscientific methods and smart tourism experience technologies to tourism and hospitality and outlined the utilization of neuroscientific methods and smart experience technologies in researching emotional states within the domains of tourism and hospitality. To fulfil the third objective of this research, a first analysis was carried out to identify the type of neuroscientific methods and smart experiences technologies used in hospitality tourism studies. Of the 121 empirical papers, 47% of the papers use Eye Tracking, in tourism and hospitality studies, followed by Heart Rate with 21%.
