Marco Mandolfo

While the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) in destination marketing is recognized, tourists’ motivations to adopt it remain underexplored. This paper investigates cognitive and affective factors influencing intentions to use VR in heritage tourism contexts. Integrating the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology with Anticipated Emotion, an online survey was conducted on 626 respondents. Structural Equation Modelling-Partial Least Squares was employed to test the effects of cognitive and emotional predictors. Results reveal that Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, Attitude, Positive and Negative Anticipated Emotions significantly predict VR adoption intentions. Findings further show that combining cognitive and affective antecedents enhances explanatory power. For practitioners, the study offers strategies to promote VR in heritage sites by addressing both rational and emotional motivations, fostering pre-visit engagement and enriching on-site experiences. This represents the first integration of UTAUT and Anticipated Emotion in heritage destination marketing, offering a perspective on VR adoption among visitors.

Purpose: Historically, operations management research and practice have largely overlooked the variability among individual workers, often treating them as interchangeable components. This paper explores the potential benefits of incorporating neurobiological response monitoring to advance human-centric approaches in these domains. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on existing evidence of using neurobiological responses to study human factors, this study identified three conceptual areas of added value for operations management research: identifying mechanisms underlying workers’ performance, objectively complementing self-reports through implicit responses measurement, and enabling continuous, real-time data collection. A proof-of-concept experiment in a laboratory setting, which replicated a factory assembly line, demonstrated the added value of neurobiological response monitoring in operational contexts (annex). Findings: Building on the three conceptual areas of added value, we propose a set of research questions aimed at advancing understanding in operational domains shaped by human variability. Adopting a human-centric perspective, we focus on four dimensions: productivity, flexibility, safety and well-being. Practical implications: Integrating neurobiological response monitoring into operations management provides a novel lens for human-centric management, enabling workforce variability to become a competitive advantage. Managers must address privacy and acceptance concerns by framing neurobiological response monitoring as mutually beneficial, while building skills and governance structures to translate neurobiological data into actionable decisions. Originality/value: By introducing neurobiological response monitoring to operations management, this paper addresses overlooked human variability and answers calls for methodological innovation. It contributes by outlining conceptual added value and practical implications for researchers and managers.