Celebrity endorsements have increased dramatically over the past few decades as a marketing strategy to capture consumers’ attention. Despite some potential risks, this approach has been proven to be highly effective. The theme park is a popular form of entertainment nowadays which usually have strong emotion engagement with consumers. The present study focuses on explore the effect of celebrity endorsements for theme parks. The eye-tracking technology is adopted to accurately capture the subjects’ visual responses when viewing the corresponding advertisements. A post-trial survey is also used to collect the participants’ subjective evaluation of the advertisements. Participants were randomly assigned to two experimental groups: Group A viewed theme park advertisements with celebrity models, while Group B viewed advertisements with non-celebrity models. In both Group A and B, the models are further divided by genders and numbers. The results revealed that, compared to non-celebrity models, participants devoted significantly more visual attention to the celebrity models, who got higher Fixation Counts. However, this increased focus on models was accompanied by reduced attention to brand-related information of the theme park, as reflected by longer Time to First Fixation in branding information areas. Gender was also discussed during the analysis. Following differences were observed: female participants fixated longer on models’ faces who showed longer Total Fixation Duration; whereas male participants showed more interests in models’ bodies, with significantly shorter Time to First Fixation in this region. Post-trial survey results further indicated a preference for single celebrity endorsers or female celebrity endorsers in advertisements. These findings provide important insights for advertising design, offering evidence of how celebrity endorsements influence consumer cognition, attentional allocation, and emotional responses.

Xu Shiyi. Effects of Celebrity Endorsements on Consumer Attention and Emotional Responses: An Eye-Tracking Study in Theme Park Advertising. Academic Journal of Business & Management (2025), Vol. 7, Issue 9: 87-93. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJBM.2025.070913.

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