Does extremes lead to opposites? The influence mechanism of specific ambivalent emotions on tourists’ travel intention

Emotions are an important basis for decision making, and their influence is increasingly attracting attention from the academic community. However, existing research mainly focuses on the impact of a single emotion on people and lacks information on the impact of ambivalent emotions. Based on the Cognitive-Affective processing system theory, this study explores tourists' willingness to travel, while experiencing the emotions of hope and anxiety through two situational experiments. This study used the Sojump platform to recover data, and a total of 200 valid samples were collected in Experiment 1 to explore the chain-mediating role of proactive coping and well-being. A total of 240 valid samples were collected in Experiment 2, which verified the boundary conditions of the interaction between hope and anxiety on tourists' willingness to travel. The results broaden the theoretical research on tourism ambivalence and provide a reference source for tourism companies to use ambivalence in precision marketing.