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This research explores the differential effects of pixel-level and object-level visual complexity in firm-generated content (FGC) on consumer engagement in terms of the number of likes and shares, and further investigates the moderating role of image brightness.

Drawing on a deep learning analysis of 85,975 images on a social media platform in China, this study investigates visual complexity in FGC.

The results indicate that pixel-level complexity increases both the number of likes and shares. Object-level complexity has a U-shaped relationship with the number of likes, while it has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the number of shares. Moreover, image brightness mitigates the effect of pixel-level complexity on likes but amplifies the effect on shares; contrarily, it amplifies the effect of object-level complexity on likes, while mitigating its effect on shares.

Although images play a critical role in FGC, visual data analytics has rarely been used in social media research. This study identified two types of visual complexity and investigated their differential effects. We discuss how the processing of information embedded in visual content influences consumer engagement. The findings enrich the literature on social media and visual marketing.

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 investigate the differences in consumer pleasure, arousal and purchase intention when consumers encounter food advertising on Instagram using different endorsers and visual complexity levels.

An experimental design was conducted involving 180 undergraduate students from several universities in Surabaya, Indonesia. The participants had actively used Instagram for at least one year.

Food ads endorsed by a celebrity generate more pleasure and arousal than those endorsed by food experts. Food advertising using high levels of visual complexity cues generates more pleasure and arousal than less complex advertising. However, less complex food ads using food experts create greater pleasure than those endorsed by celebrities. Consumer pleasure and arousal were significant mediators of the impact of endorser type and visual complexity on consumer purchase intentions.

As celebrities and higher levels of visual complexity result in more favorable responses to Instagram ads, food marketers need to consider increasing visual complexity when using celebrities in advertising by adding more objects, using more colors, objects, or textures and incorporating asymmetric elements in the advertisements.

This is one of the few studies comparing the effectiveness of celebrity and expert endorsers in Instagram advertising. Also, this research extends the existing knowledge about visual complexity in the context of social media advertising.

This study aims to provide a method to assess the perceptual impact of the visual complexity of building façades.

The research identifies the number of design elements and the variation in their position and colour as variables of visual complexity. It introduces the concepts of vertices and corners as atomic indicators on which the measurement of these variables is built. It measures visual complexity and its variables in images of building façades and analyses their relationships with participants' reactions. It reports on the effect of visual complexity on preferences, the adequacy of different methods in measuring visual complexity and the perceptual impact of each of its variables.

The research demonstrates that visual complexity can be assessed through the measure of its variables and their statistical mapping to users' preferences.

The manuscript provides the foundation for a planning/assessment tool for the visual control of the built environment using computer systems based on the preferences of residents through the examination of the relationship between the users and their environment. It creates a paradigm, which introduces a robust concept in the visual analysis of urban design.

Based on sensory marketing theory and cognitive appraisal theory, this study investigates whether and how the background visual complexity of live-streaming affects consumers' purchase intention and reveals the underlying mechanisms through which background visual complexity influences consumers' purchase decisions.

The experiment was conducted with 180 college students, using eye-tracking technology to explore the impact mechanism of live background visual complexity on consumers' purchase intention, considering three types of background visual complexity (high vs medium vs low) and two levels of need for cognitive closure (high vs low).

Firstly, the background visual complexity of live-streaming positively influences consumers' purchase intention by eliciting positive emotions (pleasure and arousal), and the relationship between consumer emotions and purchase intention is nonlinear. Secondly, need for cognitive closure to significantly moderate the influence of background visual complexity on purchase intention.

The limited sample size makes it difficult to generalize to other consumer groups. Also, the study only focuses on one visual factor, lacking comprehensive analysis from multiple perspectives.

It is recommended that live e-commerce companies optimize the visual design of live-streaming backgrounds and identify consumer traits to match the visual complexity with consumers' level of need for cognitive closure, thereby stimulating positive emotions and facilitating more satisfactory shopping decisions.

This paper addresses an interesting and practical issue related to the effects of live background visual complexity on consumers' purchase intention.

This study aims to examine the visual effects of cause-related marketing (CM) posts on Instagram, with a focus on image resolution and consumer engagement.

Three studies were conducted through an experimental design. Study 1 (N = 155) uncovered the mediation underlying the effects of image quality (low and high image resolution). Study 2 (N = 160) replicated the findings of the first study and extended the investigation by examining the mediator (fluency) and moderator (visual sensitivity). Study 3 (N = 291) further extended the effects of image resolution by demonstrating its interactive effects with the visual complexity of an Instagram post design in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment.

The serial mediation analysis demonstrated that high image resolution CM posts yielded more favorable evaluations in terms of brand credibility and information costs saved, subsequently leading to positive brand attitudes, purchase intentions and increased Instagram engagement. Processing fluency mediated image effects on brand credibility, while individual differences in visual sensitivity moderated the image effects. The image resolution effects were greater for visually complex CM posts compared to simple ones.

To one's best knowledge, little to no research has examined the image quality of Instagram posts in the context of CM and the extent to which such visual cues can affect consumers' brand evaluations and engagement on the platform.

Despite its practical significance, there exists a notable gap in understanding the specific role of CM posts on Instagram and the impact of visual elements on consumer behaviors. The current research findings aim to bridge the research gap.

While prior studies have explored the relationship between visual appeal and purchasing decisions, the role of bookmarking has largely been underemphasized. This research aims to address this gap by focusing on the impact of bookmarking on consumer behavior, guided by the cognitive load theory and dual-system theory.

The authors executed a controlled experiment and analyzed the results using a two-stage regression method that linked visual appeal, bookmarking and purchase intent. Further empirical analysis was conducted to authenticate the authors' proposed model, utilizing real-world mobile commerce data from a clothing company.

This study's findings suggest that visual appeal influences purchase intent primarily through the full mediation of bookmarking, rather than exerting a direct influence. Furthermore, an increase in colorfulness corresponds positively with visual appeal, while visual complexity exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with it.

This study provides novel insights into the choice-set formation process through the theoretical lens of dual-system theory. Additionally, the authors employed an image processing technique to quantify a product's visual appeal as depicted in a photograph. This study also incorporates a comprehensive econometric analysis to connect the objective aspects of visual appeal with subjective responses.

This study aims to investigate the effects of two visual design principles, repetition and compositional lines, in a food image on purchase intention in the context of a mobile food delivery app and test the effect of crossmodal correspondences between vision and taste as a processing mechanism.

In this study, two experiments were conducted using burgers and iced tea as stimuli.

The results demonstrate that repetition of an identical food product increases visual appeal for both burgers and iced tea. However, the optimal level of repetition was different between the two products. The findings show that different compositional lines generate different levels of visual appeal and the effects of compositional lines vary between burgers and iced tea. The results also validate the serial mediation effects of vision and taste between design principles and purchase intention.

The findings of this study add substantially to the understanding of visual information processing in food retailing by demonstrating how design principles such as repetition and compositional lines facilitate crossmodal responses between vision and taste and influence purchase decisions in a mobile platform. Also this study provides guidance as to how food retailers use design principles (e.g. repetition and compositional lines) for different products effectively when the food retailers develop visual digital content for a mobile app.

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.

This study aims to explore the visual social media (SM) (Instagram) communication and the visual characteristics of smart tourism destination (STD) communication from destination marketing/management organizations (DMOs) and user-generated content (UGC) perspectives, which refer to projected image and perceived image, respectively.

Three DMO official accounts of STDs (Helsinki, Gothenburg and Lyon) and corresponding official hashtags were selected for the sample and total 6,000 post data (1,000 × 6) were retrieved from Instagram. Visual communication content was examined with a netnographic design over a proposed four-level visual content framework using corresponding methodological approaches (thematic analysis, visual analysis, object detection and text mining) for each level.

Among the eight emerging themes dominating the images, communication of smart elements conveys far less than expected textual and visual signals from DMOs despite their smart status, and in turn, from UGC as well. UGC revealed three extra image themes regardless of smartness perception. DMOs tend to project and give voice to their standard metropolitan areas and neighborhoods while UGCs focus on food-related and emotional elements. The findings show a partial overlap between DMOs and UGCs, revealing discrepancies in objects contained in visuals, hashtags and emojis. Additionally, as a rare attempt, the proposed framework for visual content analysis showed the importance of integrated methods to investigate visual content effectively.

The number of attributes in visual analysis and focusing on the observed elements in text content (text, hashtags and emojis) are the limitations of the study in terms of methodology.

Apart from the multiple integrated methods used over a netnographic design, this study differs from existing SM and smart destinations intersection literature by attempting to fill a gap in focusing on and exploring visual SM communication, which is scarce in tourism context, for the contents generated by DMOs and users.

本研究旨在探讨从目的地营销管理组织（DMO）和用户生成的内容（UGC）获取的视觉社交网站传播（instagram）以及智慧旅游目的地的视觉特征。这两个角度在本文中分别命名为投射形象和感知形象。

本文收集了三个智慧旅游目的地（赫尔辛基、哥德堡、里昂）的DMO官方账号及其对应的官方标签数据, 其中从Instagram获取了一共6000个帖子（1000 x 6）。视觉传播内容是通过网络民族志设计进行分析的, 该设计采用四层视觉内容框架, 每一层使用相应的方法, 包括主题分析、视觉分析、目标检测、文本挖掘。

在8个新兴的主导形象中, 智慧元素, 尽管是智能的, 但其传达的信息远不如预期的来自DMO的文本和视觉信号, 同样, 也不如来自UGC的信息。无论智慧感知程度如何, UGC显示了3个额外的形象。DMO倾向于展现和表达目的地标准的大都会地区及其临近社区, 而UGC专注于与食物相关的和情感的元素。我们的研究显示了DMO和UGC内容的部分重叠, 但揭示了两者在图像、标签和表情符号中包含对象的差异。此外, 作为一个少有的尝试, 我们提出的视觉内容分析框架展示了集成方法对有效研究视觉内容的重要性。

从方法上来说, 视觉分析中属性的数量和在文本语境中对观察元素的关注是本研究的局限性

除了在网络民族志设计中使用多个集成方法,本文和以往社交媒体和智慧目的地交互文献的区别还体现在关注和探索DMO和UGC生成内容的视觉社交媒体沟通, 这类研究旅游研究情境下是少见的。