Tourists’ emotions can be triggered by external stimuli, subsequently impacting their attitudes and behavior. However, whether and how tourist review changes as a result of public health emergencies and their emotional arousal remains unknown. Hence, this study utilizes the emotional misattribution theory and reveals the influence of public health emergencies on the generation of tourist reviews through a quasi-experiment constituted by the COVID-19 outbreak. The difference-in-differences analysis reveals that tourist reviews became more positive during the pandemic, which can be attributed to the nostalgia aroused by the public health emergencies, leading to emotional misattribution behavior. We further analyzed the sources of tourist review changes and identified whether a review was based on purchase orders and tourist reviewer status as factors contributing to changes in rating and review. These findings contribute to tourist behavior literature within the tourism management field and provide practical implications for tourism practitioners and platform operators.