- Article
- Open access
- Published:
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2026) Cite this article
We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.
Abstract
Nostalgic travel imagery has often relied on black-and-white or desaturated visual conventions in both research and practice. However, Generation Z has grown up in a highly digitalized and color-rich media environment, raising an important question: do their nostalgic responses continue to conform to traditional visual conventions, or can they be more effectively elicited by contemporary color cues embedded in familiar travel imagery? Although extensive research has demonstrated that color influences emotional responses and behavioral intentions, its role in nostalgic travel imagery, particularly among Generation Z, remains insufficiently understood. To address this gap, the study examined the psychological effects of image color in nostalgic travel imagery among 33 Generation Z participants. An 8 (image color) × 4 (image theme) repeated-measures experiment assessed nostalgic affect, positive and negative affect, and visit intention. Image color produced significant main effects with large effect sizes across all four outcomes. In particular, compared with the grayscale condition, the original color condition elicited greater nostalgic affect, positive affect, and visit intention, as well as lower negative affect. Image theme significantly influenced nostalgic affect, negative affect, and visit intention, but not positive affect. Significant color × theme interactions were also observed across the four outcomes, suggesting that color effects may vary across thematic contexts; however, these interaction patterns are interpreted as exploratory. These findings challenge the exclusive association of nostalgic imagery with black-and-white visual conventions and show that original color imagery can serve as an effective nostalgic cue for Generation Z. They also highlight the emotional complexity of nostalgia-related responses and extend color psychology and nostalgia research into digital tourism communication. Practically, the findings suggest that destination marketers should consider original and contextually meaningful color treatments rather than relying uniformly on monochromatic nostalgic imagery.
Subjects
Funding
This research was supported by [National Social Science Fund of China] under grant number [19ZD27].
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethical approval
This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. The study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Guangdong University of Technology on August 18, 2024. Number of approval: GDUTXS2024162. No data collection or analysis was conducted before ethical approval was obtained.
Informed consent
From September 2 to 5, 2024, all participants provided written informed consent prior to the commencement of data collection. Participants were fully informed about the purpose of the study, the voluntary nature of participation, the confidentiality of their responses, data protection and anonymization procedures, and their right to withdraw from the study at any time without any negative consequences. All participants were university students and graduate students aged 18 years or older. Therefore, this study did not involve minors or other vulnerable populations, and parental or guardian consent was not required. All data collected in this study were anonymous, and no personally identifiable information was recorded. The data were used solely for academic research purposes, and the study results were reported and published only in anonymized and aggregated form.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, L., Guo, Y., Lu, S. et al. Are nostalgic colors black and white? An experimental study of nostalgic color in Generation Z’s travel imagery. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-08689-5
Download citation
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-08689-5