Experimental design is well-recognized as a method to study causality (Viglia & Dolnicar, 2020). While it has been widely adopted in the disciplines/fields such as psychology, education, behavioral economics, and marketing, experimental design remains relatively under-utilized in studying tourism-related phenomena (Fong et al., 2016). Although cross-sectional survey has been the prevailing method in tourism research, the findings only exhibit correlations or predictive relationships between variables, but not causal relationships. In this regard, experimental design has the advantage because of the controlled setting which allows minimizing or ruling out the extraneous effect of other variables. Through the control of extraneous effect, experimental design is useful for researchers to test theories and compare relations between variables under different settings. In this vein, experimental design is ideal for drawing theoretical and practical implications. It refines and expands theories, while it also provides useful practical guidelines to professionals on how to design and implement business practices for achieving optimal results under different settings. Definitely, when applying the implications, practitioners need to take into consideration of the limitations in experimental design, especially if the experiments are low in realism. Nonetheless, experimental research is very useful in supporting and expanding the role of tourism research for providing implications for practitioners and contributing to theory. The strength of experimental design in theory testing lends credence to extend its adoption in addressing tourism-related research questions. Recent behavioral research literature has witnessed suggestions on using innovative approaches in experimental design and data analytical methods in experimentation, for examples, singlecase experimental design (Bentley et al., 2019), recording physiological responses (Morales et al., 2017), single-paper meta-analysis(McShane & Böckenholt, 2017), Bayesian ANOVA (Wedel & Dong, 2020), Multiple Indicator Multiple Causes model and Structured Means Model (Breitsohl, 2019). These contentions signal that experimental design in behavioral research is evolving. It is imminent to create the momentum of experimental research in tourism, given the fact that corresponding publications have remained the minority. The momentum will allow tourism research to keep pace with the evolvement of experimental design in behavioral research. To this end, we initiated this special issue in Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research (APJTR) which aims to promote the adoption of experimentation to resolve tourism problems. The special issue has attracted a great interest with numerous submissions coming from scholars all over the globe. After the peer-review processes, six papers have been accepted for publication in the special issue. Themajor merits of these papers include: a holistic view of recent experimental research in tourism, field experiment, multi-studies experimental research, using virtual reality (VR) together withmeasuring physiological responses amid experiments, as well as examining important industry issues such as technology application and disabilities of service staff. The following presentation further explains the contribution of each paper in the field. Authored by Sunny Sun, Rob Law, and Mu Zhang, the first paper entitled “An updated review of tourism-related experimental design article” portraited a state-of-the-art and comprehensive picture of the topics, theoretical foundations, participants, manipulations, and data analysis in tourismrelated experimental research papers published in the period of 2010 and July 2019. Based on their review, the authors suggested that future experimental research should ground their ideas in theories. While most previous papers focused on the topic of consumer behavior and experience, more scholarly effort should be devoted to social media. Furthermore, as ANOVA was the primary analysis used in previous research, diversification of data analytical methods was recommended. The second paper is authored by Eun Joo Kim, Choongbeom Choi, and Sarah Tanford, and entitled “Influence of scarcity of travel decisions and cognitive

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旅游实验研究

实验设计是研究因果关系的一种方法（Viglia＆Dolnicar，2020年）。虽然它已被心理学，教育，行为经济学和市场营销等学科/领域广泛采用，但实验设计在研究与旅游相关的现象方面仍然相对未被充分利用（Fong等人，2016）。尽管横断面调查一直是旅游业研究中的主要方法，但调查结果仅显示变量之间的相关性或预测关系，而没有因果关系。在这方面，实验设计的优势在于可控的设置，该设置允许最小化或排除其他变量的外在影响。通过控制无关的效果，实验设计对于研究人员测试理论和比较不同设置下变量之间的关系非常有用。在这种情况下，实验设计是得出理论和实践意义的理想选择。它完善和扩展了理论，同时也为专业人员提供了有用的实用指南，指导他们如何设计和实施业务实践以在不同环境下获得最佳结果。毫无疑问，在应用这些含义时，从业人员需要考虑到实验设计的局限性，尤其是在实验的真实性较低的情况下。尽管如此，实验研究对于支持和扩大旅游研究的作用非常有用，可以为从业者提供启示并为理论做出贡献。实验设计在理论测试中的实力使人们有信心扩大其在解决旅游相关研究问题中的应用。最近的行为研究文献见证了关于在实验设计中使用创新方法和在实验中使用数据分析方法的建议，例如，单箱实验设计（Bentley等人，2019），记录生理反应（Morales等人，2017），论文荟萃分析（McShane＆Böckenholt，2017），贝叶斯ANOVA（Wedel＆Dong，2020），多指标多重原因模型和结构均值模型（Breitsohl，2019）。这些争论表明行为研究中的实验设计正在不断发展。鉴于相应出版物仍然是少数，这一事实迫在眉睫，将创造旅游业实验研究的势头。这种势头将使旅游业研究与行为研究中实验设计的发展保持同步。为此，我们在《亚太旅游研究杂志》（APJTR）上发起了本期特刊，旨在促进采用实验来解决旅游问题。特刊引起了极大的兴趣，来自全球的学者提交了许多论文。经过同行评审，六本论文已被接受发表在特刊上。这些论文的主要优点包括：对近期旅游业实验研究的整体看法，田间实验，多学科实验研究，使用虚拟现实（VR）以及测量实验中的生理反应，以及研究重要的行业问题，例如技术应用和服务人员的残疾。以下演示进一步说明了该领域中每篇论文的贡献。由Sunny Sun，Rob Law和Mu Zhang撰写的第一篇题为“与旅游相关的实验设计文章的最新回顾”的论文描绘了有关主题，理论基础，参与者，操作的最新技术和全面情况，以及2010年和2019年7月发表的与旅游相关的实验研究论文中的数据分析。基于他们的评论，作者建议未来的实验研究应以理论为基础。尽管以前的大多数论文都集中在消费者行为和体验主题上，但是应该在社交媒体上投入更多的学术努力。此外，由于方差分析是先前研究中使用的主要分析方法，因此建议采用多种数据分析方法。第二篇论文由Eun Joo Kim，Choongbeom Choi和Sarah Tanford撰写，题为“旅行决策和认知不足的影响