The role of behavioral methods used in research on tourism development

The aim of the paper is to identify the role of emotional factors in the analysis of socioeconomic phenomena in tourism and the resulting distortions of test results obtained with the help of the questionnaire tool. The authors also tried to show the usefulness of the application of new, non-standard research methods to study socioeconomic phenomena in tourism. In accomplishing this goal, a critical analysis of professional literature and empirical studies based on primary sources of data from pilot surveys conducted by the authors of the paper among students of one of the universities in Vilnius (Lithuania) and in Szczecin (Poland) was carried out. To pilot survey research, simple elements of descriptive statistics research and testing of the difference between two population proportions were used in the paper. The results of the research indicated that the above phenomena also occur among tourists. The imperfection of the methods used in this new field of science, neuro-tourism, is also presented, which requires further research on this issue.