How multimodal cues shape tourist engagement in platform-mediated travel videos

This study examines how multimodal cues embedded in travel videos relate to tourist engagement in a platform-mediated environment. The analysis is based on a dataset of 1,215 YouTube travel videos published from August 2013 through February 2025, and examines how textual signals and visual emotional cues conveyed through thumbnails relate to user engagement behavior. The empirical background is a period of institutional reform, characterized by temporal changes in content production and reception responses. Given the non-negative, right-skewed nature of engagement data, a gamma regression model is employed. The findings reveal that emoticon cues in titles show a positive correlation with engagement, while negative visual emotional cues are significantly associated with lower levels of engagement. Title sentiment polarity shows no detectable effect in the regression models, indicating that interface-level visual cues merit attention in shaping user responses to destination-related content on digital platforms.