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Article Name: Coloring the destination: The role of color psychology on

Instagram

Authors: Chung-En Yu, Selina Yuqing Xie , Jun Wen

Keywords: Color; Instagram; Post popularity; Online marketing ; Content

analysis; Data mining ; Destination branding

Gap: This study analyzed current practices related to color composition in

tourism-related photographs on Instagram.

Objective: to uncover the most common colors on Instagram when users

publish tourism-related photographs
-to investigate how lightness, chroma, and hue in tourism-related photographs
influence Instagram post popularity based on different photographic typologies.

Literature reviews:

Destination branding and social media : Destination branding contributes to

perceived value and a positive destination image by combining all elements
associated with a place, which then endure in tourists’ memory (Cai, 2002;
Legendre, Cartier, & Warnick, 2019).

-The objective of destination branding is to identify tourism offerings and thus

differentiate a destination from its competitors (George, 2017).

-The concept of identity is crucial to destination marketers because consumers’

perceptions of brand image are rooted in brand identity (Bernini, Gonz.alez,
Hallak, & Vicondoa, 2018; Qu et al., 2011).

-Such brand identity also facilitates stronger consumer–brand relationships (So,

King, Hudson, & Meng, 2017).
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‫َّح ِيم‬ 13/4/2023

-Destination image is also strongly influenced by cognitive and affective

components; cognitive components capture consumers’ beliefs and knowledge,
whereas affective components represent one’s feelings towards a destination
(Hosany, Ekinci, & Uysal, 2007).
-In contemporary tourism settings, experiences are co-created through multiple
phases (i.e., before, during, and after travel) (Zhang, 2019).

-Videos, photos, and user-generated stories on a destination’s website may

increase tourists’ visit intentions (Neuhofer et al., 2012).

Instagram as a platform for user-generated content : UGC refers to any type of

content, such as photos, videos, music, or blogs, created by unpaid contributors
online (Fatanti Suyadnya,2015).

- Popular UGC platforms among tourists include Facebook, Instagram, and

TripAdvisor (Lu, Chen,Law, 2018).

- A major factor contributing to the popularity of UGC for tourists is information

trustworthiness (Fotis, Buhalis, Rossides, 2012).

- Life sharing and social in teractions have also been identified as users’ main
motives for posting on UGC platforms (Pan, MacLaurin, Crotts, 2007).

- Among all UGC platforms, Instagram is a common platform through which

consumers can gain a sense of another’s trip (Varkaris Neuhofer, 2017).

- Research has also shown that customers prefer using hashtags on Instagram to
search for desired restaurants (Yu Sun, 2019).

- Overall, Instagram functions as a platform that can shape potential tourists’

mood, impressions, and images of a specific destination (Hanan Putit, 2014;
Nixon, Popova, Onder, 2017)

LCH color space: To precisely express color, the color space encompasses a
method of identifying and mapping a particular combination of the color model.
The color space enables reproducible representations of color through notation.
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‫َّح ِيم‬ 13/4/2023

Psychological effects of color: Some colors carry universal associations for

humans. Colors with the most shared meanings are black and blue (Amsteus et
al., 2015; Mehta & Zhu, 2009).
Photographs on social media and post popularity: UGC platforms such as
Instagram have transformed image-based communication (Lowe-Calverley Grieve,
2018). Sabate et al. (2014) stated that the use of photos and videos can facilitate
“liking,” although photos benefit more than videos from comments given photos’
inherent richness.

-A more recent study reported that roughly 77% of a brand’s followers will
interact with the brand on social media; among these, 51% are likely to purchase
a product from that brand (Lin et al., 2017)

Research methodology:
- To investigate how Instagram posters use the color space on Instagram and how
the color space influences other users’ behavior in the GBA, this research first
sought to identify travel guide accounts on Instagram. Travel guide accounts refer
herein to accounts that mainly share reviews, photos, and knowledge of GBA
locations. Keywords such as “Hong Kong,” “Macao,” and “Guangzhou” were
searched on the Instagram website, and the top public travel guide account was
chosen for each region. Instagram search results are based on interest, time
ness, and an account’s relationship to a given user; therefore, for this study, the
authors created a private Instagram account to facilitate their search process.

- Accounts that focused on gastronomy (e.g., “foodie” accounts) or that were not
intended to share destination photos were excluded from the study sample.

Discussion and conclusions: Results indicate that most photos in the study sample
did not possess a high level of lightness (i.e., lower than 50%). By contrast,
pictures
related to gastronomy, art and culture, and natural attractions tended to exhibit
lightness exceeding 50%; this pattern may have manifested because most of these
pictures were taken in daylight, which generally provides stark brightness
(Hochman Schwartz, 2012).
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- Moreover, in line with earlier studies, people’s emotions can be unconsciously

reflected in the brightness of the pictures they post (Gorn et al., 1997; Valdez
Mehrabian, 1994); that is, individuals’ experiences with gastronomy, art and
culture, and natural attractions tend to be inherently relaxing (Kastenholz
Lima, 2012).

- The results also show that the color of an image serves as another important
indicator of post popularity. From Instagram users’ perspectives, potential
tourists need to “gaze” at a desired destination (Urry Larsen, 2011) via social
media (Varkaris Neuhofer, 2017). Additionally, examinations of popular photo-
sharing social media sites such as Instagram remain in their infancy, and related
pictorial analysis is similarly immature (Picazo Moreno-Gil, 2019). This research
involved innovative methodological procedures; rather than adopting traditional
data collection approaches, a novel analytical lens was applied given a large-scale
dataset.

Limitations and future research: First, the selected travel guide accounts did not
have the same number of followers. While intuition may suggest that the number
of followers is positively correlated with the number of “likes” and comments on
accounts’ photos, this relationship may not hold true in all cases. Notably,
researchers and practitioners should realize that post popularity simply suggests
potential tourists’ areas of interest and attention; conversion rates remain
challenging to measure because “liking” and commenting “ behaviors may not
translate directly to sales.
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‫َّح ِيم‬ 13/4/2023

Information that I can use:

 Many studies have found that colour can shape individuals’ purchase
intentions (Huang & Lu, 2016), product meaning (Amsteus, Al-Shaaban,
Wallin, & Sjoqvist, 2015), brand personality (Labrecque Milne, 2012), and
product quality and price (Singh, 2006).
 Typical examples of UGC platforms include Facebook, TripAdvisor, and
Instagram, where users create and share information (Fatanti
Suyadnya,2015)
 A recent study suggested that consumers turn to social media to obtain
information about products and services; Instagram has been found to
contribute most to consumers’ decision-making processes (Varkaris
Neuhofer, 2017).
 Instagram, a popular photo-sharing platform with more than 500 million
daily active users and 100 million photos shared per day (Instagram, 2019),
also serves as a powerful marketing tool for businesses (Virtanen, Bjork,
Sjostrom, 2017) and tourist destinations (Fatanti Suyadnya, 2015; Hanan
Putit, 2014; Varkaris Neuhofer, 2017).
 The rise of the Internet and the corresponding popularity of social media
have drastically altered marketing and advertising campaigns in the tourism
and hospitality industry.
 For instance, the use of social media has enriched the travel communities
of Sweden and Puerto Rico (Neuhofer, 2016). In the case of Denmark,
destination marketers have leveraged social media to present a cohesive
story (Lund et al., 2018).
 Fatanti and Suyadnya (2015) looked at how Instagram could facilitate the
promotion of tourist destinations in Indonesia.
 In the Internet era, UGC represents an important platform that can directly
influence businesses. Tourists also often make decisions based on UGC,
particularly via Instagram (Varkaris Neuhofer, 2017).
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‫َّح ِيم‬ 13/4/2023

 According to the brand post popularity model, popularity is related to the

number of “likes” and “comments on social media posts (Vries et al., 2012).
“Likes” represent “one of the most common paralinguistic digital
affordances (PDAs) on social media (Hayes, Carr, Wohn, 2016) and
constitute a means of socialization and communication (Lowe-
CalverleyGrieve, 2018).