The interaction effect of emoji and social media content on consumer engagement: A mixed approach on peer-to-peer accommodation brands

This study examines how the interaction between emoji (emotional vs semantic) and social media content (aesthetic experience vs promotion) influences consumer engagement in tourism brands' digital communication. Based on real Twitter data and an online experiment, our results show that, for aesthetic experience content, emotional emoji elicits more consumer engagement than semantic emoji does. Moreover, emotional emoji increases consumer engagement by eliciting a higher level of emotional responses for aesthetic experience content, whereas semantic emoji enhances consumer engagement by generating greater credibility for promotion content. This study contributes to the textual paralanguage literature in tourism by offering theoretical explanations on how and why the matching effects of emoji and content type on consumer engagement occur in tourism brands' digital communication. This study also provides practical implications for tourism social media marketers on how to increase consumer engagement via the appropriate use of emoji.

Automated summary

This study explores how the combination of emotional vs semantic emoji and aesthetic experience vs promotion content affects consumer engagement in tourism brands' digital communication. The findings reveal that emotional emoji generates higher consumer engagement in aesthetic experience content, while semantic emoji increases engagement by enhancing credibility in promotion content. This study contributes to the understanding of textual paralanguage in the tourism industry and offers practical implications for social media marketers to optimize consumer engagement through the appropriate use of emoji.