Using Visual Marketing to Influence Tourists' Behaviour at UK Heritage Sites

About the Project

Heritage tourism contributes significantly to the UK economy, generating £145.8 billion in 2023. However, this economic value is accompanied by escalating environmental pressures. In UK, visitor travel accounts for up to 70% of a heritage organisation’s carbon footprint and operational emissions from historic buildings contributes 17–23% of national emissions (Climate Change Committee, 2023).  These figures highlight a critical need to influence more sustainable visitor practices across heritage settings.

Despite this urgency, current digital interventions in smart heritage tourism continue to prioritise convenience over sustainability (Balakrishnan et al., 2023). This creates a persistent gap between smart tourism and regenerative heritage tourism, which focuses on restoring ecological and cultural systems.

This project addresses this gap by examining how multi‑source visual nudges, defined as visual cues originating from AI‑generated, user-generated, and influencer-generated imagery shape visitor attitudes and behaviours in UK heritage sites. Visual nudges offer a non-intrusive way to influence choices, yet their cross-source interactions, authenticity, credibility, emotional resonance, and differential behavioural impacts remain underexplored, particularly in heritage tourism contexts.

By investigating how diverse forms of visual imagery complement, this study will advance understanding of visual persuasion, visitor behavior, and destination sustainability strategies. The aim of this research is then to develop an empirically informed visual communication framework that leverages multiple visual sources to encourage low‑carbon visitor behaviours. Practically, it provides destination management organisations with insights on how to design and deploy impactful visual nudges that support climate goals and long-term destination resilience.

Main Objectives:

1. To design and evaluate the persuasive effects of AI‑generated, user-generated, and influencer-generated visuals on visitors’ regenerative tourism behaviours.
2. To examine how credibility, authenticity, and emotional framing differ across visual sources and how these differences shape behavioural outcomes.
3. To develop and validate a multi‑source visual nudging framework for UK heritage sites that promotes low-carbon and regenerative visitor practices.

Supervisors

Dr Diana Abdullah

Professor Fatema Kawaf

Associate Professor Yangang Xing