Advertising is important for tourism and past research has demonstrated its cognitive, affective and behavioural effects on consumers (e.g., Vakratsas & Ambler, 1999). These effects are largely dependent on how well viewers process advertisements that contains different elements, such as image, description and slogan. Images are particularly important to tourism advertisements and most tourism advertisements include images of the advertised destination. This paper proposes a conceptual model which explores the influences of image vividness and image congruity on the effectiveness of ecotourism advertisements.
The Meaning Transfer Model (e.g., McCracken, 1989) suggests an object’s meaning can be transferred through images. This model has been widely adopted in advertising because most advertisements contain images. Images are believed to help transfer the intended advertising meaning and intention of the advertiser (Shimp & Andrews 2013). Most previous advertising research has focused on meaning transfer through the use of celebrity endorsers (e.g., Campbell & Warren, 2012; Hanrahan & Liu, 2013) whilst limited studies have examined key factors that influence the success of a meaning transfer from an advertising image to the advertised brand .
Image vividness is believed to be one of the important factors that can influence the success of a meaning transfer (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). However, findings from previous research on image vividness are far from consistent. Some findings suggest that image vividness facilitate imagery processing and subsequently increase advertisement and brand favourability (Fennis et al., 2012) whilst other findings suggest that image vividness has no direct impact on attitude formation or persuasion (Taylor & Thompson, 1982). Recent research suggests that, advertising elements, in particular image vividness, may play an important role in forming the attitude towards the advertisement as well as the travel intention towards the advertised destination (Pelsmacker et al., 2002; Rasty et al., 2013).
Besides image vividness, image congruity may be another important factor in determining the success of a meaning transfer through advertising images (Shimp & Andrews, 2013). Congruity has been widely studied in the field of consumer behaviour (Sirgy, 1990; Wang et al., 2009). McLaughlin (2009) categorised advertising congruity into four types (advertisement and context congruity, advertisement and product congruity, advertisement and advertiser congruity, and advertisement and other commercial component(s) congruity). Image congruity with the advertised product category has been identified as one of the most important advertising congruities (Chandon et al., 2000). Congruent advertisements are better than incongruent advertisements in generating positive attitudes or feelings towards an advertisement. For example, Kamins et al. (1991) found a viewer’s perceived congruity between the emotions reflected in a tourism advertisement and the media invoke more positive attitude towards the advertisement. Further, Rifon et al. (2004) found congruity between the description of an advertisement (ad description) and an advertising website used to display the advertisement resulted in more positive attitude towards the brand. Congruent advertisements can also generate a better purchasing intention. Kamins et al. (1991) found congruent advertisements were better at invoking an intention to use an advertised service. Conversely, incongruent advertisements lead to frustration or other negative feelings or a less favourable attitude towards an advertisement (Mandler, 1981).
Australian ecotourism advertisements are selected as the context of the current study. Ecotourism is a nature-based tourism that focuses on preserving the environment, benefiting local economies and educating travellers (Weaver, 2008). Although ecotourism is rapidly developing in the last decade, the effectiveness of ecotourism advertising has been rarely researched, perhaps because ecotourism is still a relatively new area of tourism (Hughes et al., 2005). Reiser & Simmons’s (2005) study is among a handful of studies which have investigated the effectiveness of ecotourism advertisements. Their study found that ecotourism labels helped develop a positive attitude towards an advertisement and the advertised destination. Additionally, Chang et al. (2005) found that the use of a celebrity aboriginal endorser was more effective in achieving a favourable attitude towards an advertisement than was the use of a non-celebrity aboriginal endorser. Ecotourism advertisements often use three major types of images (scenery, animal and people) (Morgan & Pritchard, 2001). However, no empirical studies have examined the meaning transfer between image and advertising responses within the ecotourism context.
People’s Republic of China is a critical market for Australian tourism and it is Australia’s second largest tourist source country (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014). Chinese tourists ranked first in terms of total trip expenditures (a total of $5.7 billion in 2014) (Tourism Research Australia, 2015). By 2020, China is expected to become Australia’s largest source country (Tourism Australia, 2011).The ecotourism market in China has risen in the past decade since its introduction in the 1990s (Cheng et al., 2013; Zhong et al., 2007). There were 1.9 billion domestic trips in China in 2009, of which 333 million were ecotourism trips. Around 80% of China’s nature reserves now have some form of ecotourism feature (Chappell, 2012). Chinese ecotourists are increasingly interested in taking overseas ecotourism trips. However, no previous study has empirically examined Chinese ecotourists’ attitude towards foreign ecotourism advertisements, which provides the opportunity for the current study. Based on the above discussion, the paper proposes positive relationships among image vividness, image congruity, attitude towards the advertisement and travel intention towards the ecotourism destination. Empirical research will be carried out in the future to test the proposed relationships. The theoretical framework can also be extended by including other advertising effectiveness measures such as comprehension or emotion (MacKay & Fesenmaier, 1997) so as to develop a better understanding of Chinese ecotourists’ responses to ecotourism advertisements.

• Fang Liu(University of Western Australia, Australia)
• Chaozhi Zhang(Sun Yat-sen University, China)
• Geoff Soutar(University of Western Australia, Australia)