Using Multidimensional Item Response Theory to Measure Efficiency of Pictures for Emotional City Image Evaluation

This study is based on the notion that a destination image consists of different components - cognitive aspects (beliefs, knowledge and experience) and affective aspects (feelings and emotions) both of which form the global image. The aim of this paper is to test a new instrument/scale to capture the affective component of a city destination image by means of a multidimensional item response theory. Since traditional verbal scales are believed to be incapable of assessing the emotional nature of a destination image sufficiently, pictorial stimuli are used here instead. After an extensive pre-selection of pictures from the International Affective Picture System, an empirical study to test the pictures in connection with European cities was conducted. A multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) model is employed to test the validity of the pre-selected pictures and their ability to discriminate between cities. Results indicate that visual content to express ones emotional feelings towards a city is more strongly affected by the valence/pleasure dimension for the present picture scale. Cities with predominance on valence/pleasure will be best described by the proposed picture scale.