03592nas a2200157   4500000000100000000000100001008004100002100001400043700001400057700001600071245010500087300001000192490000700202520321100209022001403420       2021                            d1 aMiao Miao1 aMa ChenYa1 aJiang YuShi00aThe effects of different types of images on tourists  attitudes toward heritage tourism advertising.  a74-840 v363 aWith the continuous development of culture-based tourism, heritage tourism has attracted increasing attention from marketers and scholars. The intangible nature of heritage tourism has led marketers to rely heavily on visual advertising. As the proverb says, "A picture is worth a thousand words". Because the inclusion of images in print advertising can help the audience to develop a positive attitude toward the advertisement, images are widely used in heritage tourism advertisements. Previous research has explored the relationship between advertising form, especially the visual elements of advertisements such as font, color, shape, and spatial arrangement, and advertising content. Given that images are also key elements of advertisements, their role cannot be ignored. Advertising images can be divided into two categories:photographs and illustrations. However, it is unclear how these categories of advertising images affect tourists  attitudes toward heritage tourism advertisements. Construal level theory and fit theory state that there is a positive correlation between the construal level and the psychological distance. Thus, it is more appropriate for psychologically close objects to be presented at a low construal level and psychologically distant objects to be presented at a high construal level. In this study, we examine the effects of the two abovementioned categories of advertising images on tourists  attitudes toward heritage tourism advertisements using two experiments. The first experiment identifies effective advertising images for cultural heritage tourism advertisements using a 2 * 2 experimental design involving photographs and illustrations advertising both tangible and intangible cultural heritage tourism. The results suggest that there is a correlation between the type of cultural heritage tourism and the type of advertising image used. That is, when tangible cultural heritage tourism advertisements use photographs and intangible cultural heritage tourism advertisements use illustrations, tourists  attitudes toward the heritage tourism advertisements are more positive. In addition, tourists  perceptions of fit play a mediating role. The second experiment involves a 2 (type of advertising image:photograph vs. illustration) * 2(type of cultural heritage tourism:tangible vs. intangible) * 2 (level of familiarity:high vs. low) experimental design. The results of this experiment indicate that the level of familiarity has a moderating effect on the aforementioned correlation. That is, the higher the level of familiarity, the greater the correlation between photographic(illustrative)advertising images and tangible(intangible) cultural heritage tourism. This implies that when it comes to decision-making regarding advertising images, both the type of cultural heritage tourism(tangible or intangible) and the tourists  level of familiarity should be considered. A high level of correlation between the type of image used, the type of cultural heritage tourism, and the tourists  level of familiarity would enable the tourists to form a better perception of fit, which in turn would induce more positive attitudes toward heritage tourism advertising.  a1002-5006