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Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show reduced attention to social stimuli. The reasons for these impairments are still being debated by researchers. The aim of this study is to analyse if reduced attention towards social stimuli is determined by initial underlying difficulties in the control of visual attention. Among the variables that could produce these difficulties, the authors considered geometric complexity and typology of geometric figures.

To test this hypothesis, in this paper, an eye-tracker paradigm was used for assessing visual exploration and recognition memory towards geometric figures (curved vs rectilinear) with two levels of geometric complexity (low and high) in 17 children with ASD matched with 17 children with typical development (TD).

The results showed that the ASD group seemed indifferent to both the geometric complexity and the typology of figures (curved and rectilinear), whereas the TD group showed higher performances with highly complex and curved geometric figures than with low complex and rectilinear geometric figures.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed hypotheses further.

This paper includes implications upon the presence of an unspecified visual attention deficit that is present from the early stages of the processing of stimuli.

The understanding of this deficit from the early stages of the processing of stimuli can help educators to intervene at an early stage when disturbances in social relationships are starting.

This study contributes to understanding the presence of dysfunctional perceptual antecedents that could determine general difficulties in paying attention to social stimuli in ASD subjects.

Reflecting, reliving and reforming experiences enhance longer-term effects of travel and tourism, and have been highlighted as an important aspect in determining loyalty, re-visitation and post-consumption satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to develop new methodological approaches to investigate emotion, memory creation and the resulting psychosocial effects.

The paper proposes a unique combination of physiological measures and photoelicitation-based discussions within a longitudinal design. A physiological measuring instrument (electrodermal activity [EDA] tracking technology through Empatica E4 wristbands) is utilised to capture the “unadulterated” emotional response both during the experience and in reliving or remembering it. This is combined with post-experience narrative discussion groups using photos and other artefacts to give further understanding of the process of collective memory creation.

EDA tracking can enhance qualitative research methodologies in three ways: through use as an “artefact” to prompt reflection on feelings, through identifying peaks of emotional response and through highlighting changes in emotional response over time. Empirical evidence from studies into participatory arts events and the potential well-being effects upon women over the age of 70 is presented to illustrate the method.

The artificial environment created using experimental approaches to measure emotions and memory (common in many fields of psychology) has serious limitations. This paper proposes new and more “natural” methods for use in tourism, hospitality and events research, which have the potential to better capture participants’ feelings, behaviours and the meanings they place upon them.

This study examines whether manipulation in attributes of corporate narrative disclosures and the use of graphical representations can bias non-professional investors' judgment towards firms' future performance, in an emerging market context.

The authors conduct three different experiments with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, using accounting and finance senior undergraduate students to proxy for the non-professional investors.

Results show that simple (more readable) disclosures improve non-professional investors' judgment towards firms' future performance. In addition, it is found that non-professional investors are prone to a recency effect from the intentional ordering of narrative information, when using complex (less readable) narratives. However, no primacy effect is found, when using simple (more readable) disclosures. The results further provide evidence that the inclusion of graphical representations, along with the manipulated narrative disclosures, can moderate the recency effect of information order, when using less readable and complex narrative disclosures.

The results reveal that although the content of corporate disclosures can be objective, neutral and relevant, manipulation in textual features and the use of graphical presentations, can interact to impact how non-professional investors perceive and process the disclosed information. This study provides an Egyptian evidence regarding this issue, as the majority of prior studies concentrate on developed capital markets. In addition, it contributes to prior studies evaluating the appropriateness of the Belief Adjustment Model predictions about the effect of textual presentation order on decision-making, by providing evidence from an emerging market.

Results attempt to increase the awareness of investors and encourage them to use multiple sources of information to avoid the probable bias that can result from management's manipulation of narratives. In addition, the study could be of interest to regulators and standard-setters, where the results reveal the need for guidelines and regulations to guide the disclosure of narrative information and the use of graphical information in corporate reports.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of two impression management strategies in narrative disclosures (readability and information order), along with the use of graphical representations, on non-professional investors' judgment in an emerging market, like Egypt.

Mobile Facebook (m-Facebook) creates many business opportunities for brands and firms while increasingly drawing interest in scientific literature. However, research is scarce on the immersive experiences prompted by m-Facebook, and how these experiences facilitate users’ engagement, their positive attitude towards Facebook and their continued use of it. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper theoretically and empirically analyses m-Facebook users’ immersive experiences, along with their affective and behavioural effects.

The results reveal the important role of imagery, presence and flow in the context of m-Facebook; the interplay between these three immersive phenomena; and the influence the user’s optimum stimulation level has on them.

The investigation offers a foundation for understanding users’ immersive experiences on m-Facebook, and informs practitioners who aim to enhance users’ engagement with, attitude towards, and continued use of m-Facebook content.

This research aims to investigate whether and how differences may exist in children’s preferences of package design across cultures, with a focus on three aspects of package design: curvilinearity, figurativeness and complexity.

A large-scale questionnaire survey has been conducted in a face-to-face setting in the USA and China, generating valid responses from 763 American children and 837 Chinese children of age 3-12 years.

Unlike previous findings among adults, children from both cultures were found to unanimously prefer curved package design. Nevertheless, Chinese children showed greater preferences for figurative and complex package design than American children; these tendencies increased with age, suggesting significant age–culture interactions.

The surprising finding of the lack of cultural difference in children’s preferences of curved package design suggests that such cultural preferences established in studies of adults may not emerge through time via cultural/social learning until after age 12. The limited cultures, stimuli and factors included in the study call for replications of the study in more realistic and broader settings.

The findings provide package design guidelines for consumer product marketers and designers/innovators targeting the Chinese and American children’s markets. Curved package designs are preferred by children from both cultures. Nevertheless, marketers should choose figurative and complex package design in accordance with the target children’s age and cultural background.

This study contributes to the limited empirical consumer behavior research on package design, especially that of children’s products. It also extends the literature on cultural psychology, experimental aesthetics and developmental psychology.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of a fashion store’s visual complexity on consumers’ behaviour. Considering environmental order and individuals’ sensation-seeking tendencies, the authors examine the effect of visually complex fashion stores on consumers in a more conclusive way to address the inconsistent effect found in the previous literature.

This study features a 3 (visual complexity level: low, medium, high) × 2 (environmental order condition: low, high) between subjects design, with individual sensation-seeking tendency included as a moderator. Using this design, an online survey was administered to 188 participants in South Korea.

The results indicate that there is a three-way interaction, where the interaction effect of visual complexity and environmental order is moderated by individuals’ sensation-seeking tendency. The effect of visual complexity on approach behaviours had an inverted U-shape in the low-order condition, while had a positive linear shape in the high-order condition, and the interaction effect was significant only for high-sensation seekers.

The findings assist practitioners in establishing strategies for visual merchandising and store design within fashion stores. It is suggested that retailers consider environmental order when organising a large amount of varied merchandise in a complex environment. Store managers must adjust the complexity and environmental order to meet the optimal stimulation level of their target consumers.

This study strengthens the literature on visual complexity by applying the concept to the retail environment. The results provide a significant contribution to the literature because they show how individual-level and store-level variables interact to influence consumer behaviour.

Little research has been done to understand how individual elements (e.g. advertisements) within a webpage are processed and evaluated when visual complexity is increased. Thus, this study aimed to investigate how consumers allocate attention and evaluate products and advertisements on complex webpages when they are casually browsing.

This study conducted two experiments to test the causal effects of different degrees of visual complexity on consumer responses to products and advertisements. An eye-tracking experiment (n = 90) and a follow-up online experiment (n = 121) were conducted using undergraduate students as participants.

Participants formed a global impression from the overall webpage complexity, which spilled over to evaluation of individual elements on the webpage (e.g. product, advertisement). The inverted U-shaped relationships (vs. linear negative relationships) between webpage visual complexity and attitude toward the webpage, products, and advertisements were observed. The focal product was given a consistent level of attention regardless of the complexity level.

This study provides implications for website organization and design to maximize positive consumer experiences and marketing effectiveness. The findings provide implications for retailers and advertisement buyers.

This study expanded the knowledge by examining the interplay between individual elements of webpages and the whole webpage complexity when consumers browse visually complex webpages. It is a novel finding that the overall webpage complexity effect spills over to locally attended products or advertisements.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the individual and joint effects of collative design factors, complexity and novelty, on aesthetic response to apparel products; and whether the influence of these factors is moderated by consumers’ centrality of visual product aesthetics (CVPA).

A mixed factorial experimental design, using women’s tops with design complexity and novelty (high vs low) manipulated orthogonally, was conducted among 260 female participants to test the model and its corresponding hypotheses.

Consumers’ aesthetic response was more positive for high than low complexity and novelty apparel designs. Further, when viewed in combination, high complexity + low novelty and low complexity + high novelty apparel designs were favored over high complexity + high novelty and low complexity + low novelty apparel designs, respectively. High CVPA consumers were more distinguishing than low CVPA consumers with respect to novelty in apparel designs.

This study suggests that firms need to be aware that complexity and novelty are crucial for consumers when judging apparel designs.

This study fills an important knowledge gap in the aesthetics literature by drawing on the processing fluency theory and Wundt curve and considering the joint effect of novelty and complexity, both critical determinants of a product’s marketplace success.

To help further our understanding of how keymethodological issues in conjoint analysis influence outcomes, a choice‐based conjoint study measuring consumer preferences for pre‐packed apple selection packs was conducted. The role of stimuli presentation format was considered by comparing the performance of physical prototype stimuli and realistic pictorial representations. This indicated no substantial differences in the choice decisions made using the two presentation formats and suggested that photographic images may be used instead of prototype stimuli. A second issue pertained to the need for training and warm‐up exercises prior to the actual conjoint choice task. While this indicated some differences in choice strategies, a significant improvement in internal validity of choice decisions made with and without training was not achieved. One possible explanation for this finding may be that respondents made choices between apple products, a product category for which decision strategies are likely to be stable and well‐developed.

This research aims to examine the role of perceived threat (i.e. COVID-19) on people’s preferences for destination logo designs. In addition, it investigates the influence of childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and sensation seeking on the aforementioned effect.

Five experiments are used. Studies 1 A and 1B examine the impact of the threat of COVID-19 on visiting intentions as influenced by different destination logos. Study 2 replicates the previous studies and tests for evidence of mediation by the perceived risk. Studies 3 and 4 investigate the moderating role of childhood SES and sensation seeking.

The results show that a salient threat of COVID-19 leads people to display higher visiting intentions when presented with simpler (vs complex) destination logo designs. The perceived risk mediates this effect as well. This preference is evident only for people with low (vs high) childhood SES and only for relatively low sensation seekers.

This study contributes to the branding literature by investigating how situational factors can influence affective reactions to brand logos and to the tourism literature by further investigating the impact of logos on visiting intentions.

This study provides actionable insights for tourism marketers and logo designers, allowing them to select or create positively perceived destination logos during a potential global crisis.

This research offers the first evidence that pandemic-related threat perceptions influence people’s visiting intentions when presented with different destination logos, and that these effects are influenced by individual characteristics such as childhood SES or sensation seeking. In doing so, the current study offers a more sophisticated understanding of the potential boundary conditions driving people’s brand logo evaluation.