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This volume has sought to identify the benefits of using cognitive psychology in understanding the tourist experience. It discusses areas where tourism researchers should be cautious in applying cognitive psychology. Certainly, t scholars must understand the assumptions, criticisms and limitations of cognitive theories and associated data collection techniques. Cognitive psychology is a dynamic field with alternative theoretical perspectives and emerging debates. This volume discusses particular mainstream ideas, such as cognitive appraisal theory and seeks to identify their relevance and identifies difficulties and perceived limitations scholars discover in exploring this new field.

Stories are a part of being human. They are powerful tools to create social bonds, elicit emotions, and consolidate personal and shared memories. Their role, characteristics, and effects are studied in a variety of scientific fields. In tourism, they can enhance destination distinctiveness, as well as the tourist experience. However, the cognitive processes through which stories contribute to elicitation of emotions or memorability, the very reasons why they are considered important in tourism, are still little understood. This chapter discusses some of the cognitive processes involved in storytelling drawing insights from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, which may help in better understanding and managing the tourist experience.

This chapter provides concluding comments on a cognitive paradigm and related concepts applied to tourism, as well as in studies of social and environmental sustainability. Adopting a new paradigm is difficult but worthwhile as it allows researchers to move on from a behaviourist worldview and open the black-box, that is, the brain. The main points of each of the previous chapters are provided. A number of areas for future research are discussed, including schema change, wellness and the mind-body problem, new methodologies, motivation and goals for travel and the importance of further research on emotion in tourism experiences. The use of cognitive psychology is vital for further progress into a theory of experience design.

Goals play a critical role in everyday life and shape life and lifestyles. This chapter reviews and discusses the main approaches to the study of goals, addressing main theoretical endeavours that have emerged from psychological research, and emphasising the contributions from cognitive psychology to the topic. It also discusses literature on goals and motivation as found in tourism studies, highlighting the theoretical underpinnings used in this field. The discussion concludes with the need to update, in tourism studies, knowledge from cognitive psychology and propose how a better understanding of the cognitive foundations of goal-oriented behaviour can contribute to change tourism practice.

This chapter presents a case for updating the use and development of psychological theory in tourism through an examination of the psychological stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model. The historical development and the criticism of the model has been addressed. A revised version of the model is provided based on importing new theoretical knowledge from the original discipline. This chapter argues that with an explicit focus on tourism psychology, there is some evidence to suggest that tourism theory may benefit from adopting theory from the parental discipline rather than inventing its own. Future research can address other examples of imported theories and to further examine mechanisms for this knowledge transfer and update from original disciplines relevant to the study of tourism.

This chapter uses cognitive psychology to understand how individuals deal with negative emotions using coping strategies. It discusses the coping process and reviews three current debates about cognitive appraisal theory, coping and emotion regulation. The use of coping strategies in tourism, services and business management is presented to understand different stakeholders' responses to negative emotions. The literature discusses various elements (antecedents, coping strategies, coping consequence) for emotion coping process and the chapter summarises a synthesised conceptual framework for emotional coping based on the cognitive appraisal theory. The framework is used to examine coping in the context of COVID-19. The chapter concludes with future research opportunities in this subject area.

Emotion is a key cognitive process that is central to being human. This chapter discusses various psychological approaches to understand emotions and introduces cognitive appraisal theory and its appraisal dimensions. By reviewing recent studies on emotions, this chapter recognises the theory as one of the most promising ones to advance research on emotions. The significance of appraisal theory for tourism is in the ability to explain why the same stimulus can generate different emotions in different people or in the same person at different times. Cognitive appraisal theory is able to assist in the prediction of emotions and subsequent behaviour. This chapter concludes by outlining potential topics where the theory can be particularly useful in tourism.

Effective experience design requires not only a knowledge of tourist goals, but an understanding of how these can be met in a particular tourism site. Research on experiences and experience design is supported by cognitive psychology concepts such as perception, attention, appraisal, emotion, consciousness, feelings and memory. However, these concepts are often used in a combination with others from sociology, social or environmental psychology in a manner that leads to confusion rather than clarity, without apparent understanding of the theoretical mechanisms by which these concepts are related. This chapter develops a series of propositions for potential application to tourism experience design. Future research should examine the efficacy of these propositions from cognitive psychology for tourism experience design.