Narrative empathy in the tourist guiding experience: a conceptual model linking emotional labor to narrative transportation

Tour guiding facilitates tourists' cognitive and emotional immersion, yet the psychological mechanisms underlying the link between guides' emotional labor and tourists' engagement remain underexplored. This conceptual study examines how guides' emotional labor translates into experiential outcomes, offering theoretical and practical implications for tour guiding research and training. Drawing on Emotional Labor, Narrative Transportation, and empathy-oriented theories, the study reconceptualizes narrative empathy as a distinct tourist-internal psychological process operating as a mediating construct. Rather than representing simple emotional engagement, narrative empathy involves cognitive perspective-taking and affective resonance with the narrative world. The proposed model suggests that guides' emotional labor performance, exemplified by authentic emotion regulation strategies such as deep acting, is expressed through structured storytelling and narrative cues. This storytelling performance elicits narrative empathy in tourists, enhancing their cognitive and emotional engagement and facilitating narrative transportation. The process is influenced by interaction dynamics, prior expectations, and group dynamics, while performance indicators, such as tone of voice, body language, and dramatization, strengthen its effectiveness. These mechanisms contribute to higher tourist satisfaction and memorable experiences. By clarifying narrative empathy as the psychological mechanism connecting guide performance with tourist narrative transportation, this study advances tourism theory through a process-oriented conceptual framework and provides practical insights for guide training.