Effect of tourist photographs on attitudes towards destination: Manifest and latent content

•Analyzed how tourist photos posted online are “decoded” on the receiver's end.•Examined latent and manifest content of tourist photos and their interplay.•Manifest content influences attitudes towards destination.•Both cognitive and affective latent attributes influence desire to visit.•Mediating role of affective latent attributes is identified.

In the sender-message-receiver communication model, tourist photographs project organic destination images which are interpreted on the receiving end of the communication channel by potential tourists, influencing their tourism-related attitudes and affecting behavior. This study investigated how photographs taken by American and Korean tourists while visiting Russia and posted in travel blogs and on media-sharing websites affect perceptions of Russia as a travel destination by those who view these images. The study specifically focused on latent content of tourist photographs with respect to such destination attributes as crowdedness, cleanliness, level of economic development, personal safety, level of modernity, friendliness, uniqueness, and extent of commercialization, as well as affective qualities of destination places. Researchers evaluated the interplay between the manifest and latent content of the images and how each type of content separately and both types together affected attitudes of viewers towards the destination and their desire to visit it.