When is a picture not worth a thousand words? The psychological effects of mediated exposure to a remote location

•Experiment testing the effect of mediated representations of an unfamiliar location on desire to visit.•Media type positively influenced desire to visit through different routes.•3D panorama of the location heightened feelings of spatial presence.•Textual description of the location decreased psychological distance.

The Internet has radically decreased the influence of physical distance by allowing people to share images and information about distant places at the click of a button. But we still do not understand how exposure to this information influences our mental conception of places that are far away, and how these effects may change our attitudes towards distant locations. This has implications for both tourism marketers and travelers consulting social media sites for information on destinations. We conducted an experiment to see if exposing participants to one of four mediated representations of an unfamiliar environment impacted their attitudes towards the location. We found that mediated exposure to a distant place positively influenced desire to visit the location through different routes: 3D panoramas heightened feelings of spatial presence which translated into more positive attitudes towards the place, while textual descriptions decreased psychological distance which in turn was associated with more positive attitudes.