Tourists' visual attention toward linguistic landscape: an eye-tracking experimental study

Tourist destinations are significantly influenced by visual representation and linguistic landscapes, which serve as key symbolic resources that attract tourists and stimulate tourism intentions. Within global-local interactions, linguistic landscapes are endowed with the symbolic functions of globalisation or localisation, allowing tourists to experience unforgettable moments. Experiment 1 collected eye-movement data from 54 Chinese tourists to explore the impact of different functional linguistic landscapes on tourists' visual attention. Experiment 2 collected eye-movement data from 165 Chinese tourists to examine the moderating role of fonts and practical subjects in the impact of linguistic landscape functions on visual attention. Results demonstrate that the linguistic landscape with global and local symbolic functions has significant visual advantages. Meanwhile, official and calligraphic linguistic landscapes demonstrate notable moderating effects. This study thus provides a scientific foundation for destination linguistic landscape creation and tourist experience management.