Qingdao travelogue study finds tourist emotions near coast are nonlinear

A study of tourist travelogues in the Chinese coastal destination of Qingdao reports that positive emotions did not consistently increase as visitors moved closer to the sea. The study, summarized in the abstract of a peer-reviewed article published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, examined how tourists’ emotional responses varied across space and time.

Researchers combined online travelogue analysis, affective semantic processing and geographic information system techniques to reconstruct tourists’ spatiotemporal trajectories and emotional dynamics. Qingdao was selected as the representative destination. The abstract does not provide the number of travelogues or tourists, the collection period, sampling criteria, uncertainty estimates or detailed validation procedures, so the scope of the evidence cannot be assessed beyond the reported case study.

The findings challenge a simple linear relationship between proximity to the coast and stronger positive emotion. Although tourists showed a strong orientation toward the sea, positive emotional responses were scattered in nearshore locations and increased at certain distances. The abstract associates these patterns with embodied, multimodal interactions involving natural and cultural landscapes, weather, sand texture, crowding and the degree of spatial chaos or control. Tourist mobility was also associated with shifts in embodied interaction and emotional variability; the abstract does not establish these factors as independent causal effects.

Because the supplied evidence consists of the article abstract and an early-access version subject to further editing, the results should be understood as the authors’ reported summary rather than an assessment of the full study. The authors position the work as a contribution to understanding spatiotemporal emotional experiences in coastal tourism and as a basis for experience design and destination management. No specific management measures, causal mechanisms or general effects for other destinations are established in the available text.

Subject of Research: Spatiotemporal variation in tourist emotions across coastal Qingdao

Article Title: Seaward we go, does joy then grow? The spatiotemporal dynamics of tourist emotions in coastal destinations

Article References: Liu, J., & Lu, J. (2026). Seaward we go, does joy then grow? The spatiotemporal dynamics of tourist emotions in coastal destinations. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-09485-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09485-x

Keywords: coastal tourism, Qingdao, tourist emotions, online travelogues, geotagged data, spatial analysis, affective semantics, GIS, destination management, Seaward, does, then