EMOTIONS AND PAIR TRUST IN ASYNCHRONOUS HOSPITALITY CULTURAL EXCHANGE FOR STUDENTS IN TAIWAN AND HONG KONG

ABSTRACT
Social and emotional dynamics have an impact on students’ learning processes in online-learning situations. This study explores university students’ emotions and trust levels resulting from collaborative communication behaviors when they interacted as part of a Food and Tourism course in Taiwan and Hong Kong. More specifically, students’ emotions and trust levels were investigated and were founded to have varied over the course of the study. Results show that the Taiwan-based participants seemed to express their emotions more strongly than the Hong Kong-based ones. Both the Hong Kong and Taiwan groups generally felt satisfied, excited and curious, whereas they were sometimes perceived to be dispirited, insecure and angry while the project was in progress and at the end of the project. The three sources that caused most emotional comment were self, social and others. When it came to dealing with emotion, most students tried to solve problems by themselves. They believed that they had the ability to solve the problems and held themselves responsible for dealing with their own emotions. The pair trust survey shows that both groups gave positive responses for all items, but there seemed to be a gap between the perception of pair trust and the reality of dealing with emotion.