In the context of the pandemic, there is a growing emphasis on experiencing nature and naturalness (Pangestu, 2021). When tourists make destination choices and select tourism products, they prefer those with a higher degree of naturalness. For many tourists, experiencing nature in its natural environment is becoming a common choice (OECD, 2021). There is a lack of significant investigation into how nature is communicated and presented to enhance visitor perceptions of natural awakening. It is important to identify other factors that drive the perceived naturalness of tourism pick-up and in this study the authors expand on the effect of colour saturation on tourist perceptions of naturalness. Colour is important in the tourism and hospitality industry as visual information is a major factor driving the selection process of tourism products when tourists search for product information, but there is not a wealth of research on colour in tourism and this study focuses specifically on the aspect of colour saturation dimension to examine its impact on tourists' perception and behaviour in the context of nature tourism.

Since highly saturated colours can induce excitement and attract the attention of consumers, the study proposes Hypothesis 1:

Hypothesis 1: Tourism marketing materials (e.g., brand logo/food package/destination picture) with high (vs. low) color saturation will decrease perceived naturalness of the marketed targets (e.g., brands/food products/destinations) among tourists.

If the conceptual association between colour saturation and sense of nature holds true for tourism impacts, then this association may extend to influence tourists' travel and consumption intentions in the destination. Therefore, we proposed:

Hypothesis 2: Tourists’ travel and consumption intention will decrease when a destination branded as “natural” adopts marketing materials with high (vs. low) color saturation.

To test the research hypothesis, the authors conducted three studies. Study 1 employed a within-subjects design, using a one-sample t-test to analyse the data and tested the association between colour saturation and brand naturalness image. Study 2 used a one-factor between-subjects design to test the effect of colour saturation on visitors' perceived naturalness of food. Like Study 2, Study 3 used a one-factor between-subjects design and examined how perceived naturalness could weaken visitors' intention to travel by reducing it.

The results of the study showed that hypothesis one was supported. The results of Study 2 provided additional evidence for Hypothesis 1, supporting the association with real tourism products. Furthermore, Study 2 found that even the colour saturation in the product packaging affected the participants' perceived naturalness of that product. Study three supported hypothesis two.

This study made the following contributions:

• The current research offers a novel perspective to identify how to strengthen the naturalness of many nature-related tourism products, which is deemed to become an important research area due to the outbreak of COVID.
• By examining the role of color saturation, this study attempts to fill this research void and provide practical contributions to the tourism and hospitality sectors.
• This research offers an innovative methodological endeavor in using experimental methods to examine the effect of color and its impact on how to increase naturalness from the perspective of tourists’ perception.