Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore recent trends in the theories and methods applied to studies on residents’ attitudes. Design/methodology/approach To achieve the objective of this research, this paper provides a review of 90 journal articles on residents’ attitudes towards tourism published between 2011 and 2017. The relevant articles were then analysed using content analysis. Findings Key findings revealed that although social exchange theory is still dominant in exploring residents’ attitudes towards tourism, new frameworks are beginning to emerge such as institutional theory and bottom-up spillover theory. Nonetheless, alternative theoretical perspective has only been applied once or twice and requires further engagement. Quantitative methods still dominate the field, with the geographic dispersal of studies spanning 33 countries. Research limitations/implications A potential limitation of this review is that articles published only in four leading tourism journals, namely, ATR, JTR, TM and JOST, were analysed. Originality/value This review contributes to the literature in tourism by assessing the shift in the application of theory and methodological approaches in residents’ attitudes studies from previous systematic reviews. This study adds to the body of knowledge by providing an overview of the existing status of research on residents’ attitudes towards tourism, providing direction for future scholarly inquiry. A further contribution of this review is an indication of not only the data collection methods but also data analysis techniques which have not been done in previous review articles on residents’ attitudes towards tourism. As opposed to other systematic reviews, this paper assessed the geographical setting of studies on residents’ attitudes towards tourism.

Periodic assessment of the 'state of play' in research outputs is an essential process for gauging academic progress and latent trends within a field of study. Bibliometric analysis of 839 sustainable tourismrelated papers over a thirty-year period (1987-2017), extracted from a selection of the top ranked tourism journals confirmed a lack of reticulation and integration among individual contributions, in part due to an exponential increase in output, but parallel evidence of subdomain maturation. This includes reduced emphasis on definitional issues and increased focus on empirical applications as well as a broader 'pragmatic turn' indicated by the dominance of 'stakeholder' contributions related to industry and community. These moreover are qualified by recognition of the need to adopt and develop higher standards of methodological and theoretical engagement. We innovate by analysing engagement with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and reveal these to constitute a major latent theme, albeit to widely variable extents. It is recommended that these be mobilised as a pragmatic and universally embraced framework for engaging with sustainable tourism and salient external threats such as climate change.

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.

There is strong growth in research on tourist emotion, with a substantial scholarly debate emerging surrounding approaches to measurement. Recently objective physiological methods for measurement of emotion have been applied in the tourism field. However, there are few studies which explore the benefits and limitations of applying physiological and self-report methods to measure emotions. This research aims to compare and contrast physiological and self-report methods to assess emotional responses to tourism marketing stimuli where music was manipulated. This research assessed emotional responses from 37 participants to three tourism advertisements of Iran using four key methods; specifically, FaceReader™, skin conductance, self-report surveys and post hoc interviews. This research found that the light rhythmic music tends to evoke positive emotions and a higher level of emotional arousal in participants than does the traditional Iranian music or a video without music. Physiological and self-report measures of emotional arousal were inconsistent, but both techniques found similar results for assessing the valence of emotions. Thus, results highlight the importance of applying physiological techniques in combination with self-report surveys and post hoc interviews to provide a better and more accurate understanding of emotional experiences.