Mingming Cheng

Social media in tourism: a visual analytic approach

This research note seeks to examine a vast amount of tourism-related Chinese social media posts using a visual analytic approach. Visual analytics turns information overload into an opportunity. In this case, the mainstream Chinese microblog service, Sina Weibo, was selected as it generates large volumes of data, representing significant consumer insights, that are challenging to analyse by other common research methods. The most frequently reposted tourist visa news in the first eight months of 2014 were harvested and used as a case study. Findings from this study demonstrate that a visual analytic approach can offer insights into the impact of travel news on Chinese consumers. These insights include potential tourist generating regions, the life span of travel news, and tourists’ attitudes towards travel policy changes. Such insights provide important implications for scholars and practitioners, such as enabling real-time decisions of Destination Management Organizations’ social media marketing strategies in China.

Ambassadors of knowledge sharing: Co-produced travel information through tourist-local social media exchange

Purpose The aim of this study is to understand the knowledge-sharing structure and co-production of trip-related knowledge through online travel forums. Design/methodology/approach The travel forum threads were collected from TripAdvisor’s Sydney travel forum for the period from 2010 to 2014, which contains 115,847 threads from 8,346 conversations. The data analytical technique was based on a novel methodological approach – visual analytics, including semantic pattern generation and network analysis. Findings Findings indicate that the knowledge structure is created by community residents who camouflage as local experts and serve as ambassadors of a destination. The knowledge structure presents collective intelligence co-produced by community residents and tourists. Further findings reveal how these community residents associate with each other and form a knowledge repertoire with information covering various travel domain areas. Practical implications The study offers valuable insights to help destination-management organizations and tour operators identify existing and emerging tourism issues to achieve a competitive destination advantage. Originality/value This study highlights the process of social media mediated travel knowledge co-production. It also discovers how community residents engage in reaching out to tourists by camouflaging as ordinary users.

Exploring the Effects of Heritage Site Image on Souvenir Shopping Attitudes: The Moderating Role of Perceived Cultural Difference

ABSTRACT Although tourism image and souvenir shopping play critical roles in travel decisions and tourist behaviors, little is known about the relationship between them. This article seeks to address two deficits in the literature by presenting (1) the linkage between tourism image and souvenir shopping and (2) the direct and moderating effects of perceived cultural difference. Using the data drawn from UNESCO heritage sites, the authors first validated a second-order construct of heritage site image, then tested the effects of this construct and perceived cultural difference on tourists’ attitudes toward souvenir shopping in two structural models. The uncovered direct and moderated results offer important implications for tourism and hospitality theories and practice.

A Tri-Method Approach to a Review of Adventure Tourism Literature Bibliometric Analysis, Content Analysis, and a Quantitative Systematic Literature Review

This article provides an objective, systematic, and integrated review of the Western academic literature on adventure tourism to discover the theoretical foundations and key themes underlying the field by combining three complementary approaches of bibliometric analysis, content analysis, and a quantitative systematic review. A total of 114 publications on adventure tourism were identified that revealed three broad areas of foci with adventure tourism research: (1) adventure tourism experience, (2) destination planning and development, and (3) adventure tourism operators. Adventure tourism has an intellectual tradition from multiple disciplines, such as the social psychology of sport and recreation. There is an underrepresentation of studies examining non-Western tourists in their own geographic contexts or non-Western tourists in Western geographic contexts. Our findings pave ways for developing a more robust framework and holistic understanding of the adventure tourism field.

Ecotourism social media initiatives in China

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of social media by ecotourism management agencies and how this potentially changes the relationship between the ecotourist and the natural environment. It examines the meaning of ecotourism and the way that social media shapes visitor perceptions and meaning through an examination of the content of 775 Sina microblog postings from five leading ecotourism site management agencies in China. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the social media postings, a series of semi-structured interviews was also conducted with followers and management agencies. The findings provide an enhanced understanding of ecotourism marketing and its impacts on the ecotourist while also creating a framework for the use of social media to market ecotourism. The framework outlines the importance of the meanings associated with this form of communication through its promotional appeal to tourists and the outcomes for both the ecotourist and site management.

Ecotourism site in relation to tourist attitude and further behavioural changes

Despite the emergence of ecotourism in both practice and academic literature in China during recent decades, relatively little is known about the role of ecotourism site, especially in relation to tourist attitude and further behavioural change. This article seeks to address the deficit on the role of ecotourism site in Chinese domestic tourist attitude change and further adaptation of sustainable behaviour. Using a qualitative research approach with 28 interviews, the authors show that Chinese domestic tourists have become more environmentally conscious after visiting ecotourism sites and further reveals the influence of the perceived health benefits, and the ecological value of unity of nature and human beings on Chinese domestic tourists attitude change. The findings offer important implications for both tourism practitioners and academics.

A comparative automated content analysis approach on the review of the sharing economy discourse in tourism and hospitality

Using the sharing economy (SE) as the context, this article provides a coherent and nuanced methodological understanding of automated content analysis (ACA) in tourism and hospitality (TH) field. By adopting a comparative ACA approach, the paper compares the current TH Western academic literature of the SE with news media discourse in TH from the period 2011–2016 (August) (inclusive). The emerging issues from the news media discourse, such as mobility, SE companies and the role of government, are absent in current tourism academic research. Findings reveal that ACA can facilitate a more systematic comparison between different sources of data. This paper offers a starting point for tourism scholars to methodologically engage with ACA that can draw useful insights on a particular context.

Understanding the distinctiveness of Chinese Post-80s tourists through an exploration of their formative experiences

Chinese Post-80s (the Chinese equivalent of Generation Y) are a distinct generation that emerged during a period of rapid political, social and economic change under Deng Xiaoping’s policy exploration with capitalism. Chinese Post-80s demonstrate higher levels of both complexity and sophistication in their tourist behaviours when compared with earlier generations of Chinese tourists yet their distinctiveness has been largely ignored in tourism research. Underpinned by generational cohort theory, this study explores the formative experiences of Chinese Post-80s and provides insights into the way these experiences have shaped this generation and their outbound travel. These formative experiences include Reform and Open Policy, One Child Policy and Education Reforms. Two discrete groups: “made in China” and transnational Chinese Post-80s tourists have been identified. We argue that while Chinese Post-80s tourists may share many aspects in common with their Western counterparts, this generation presents its distinctiveness due to its emergence from a specific sets of events with China’s rapid change that make Chinese Post-80s different from any generation in the global environment, creating new academic inquiries for established theories of generational studies. This nuanced understanding of Chinese Post-80s tourists has profound implications for theory and practice in the context of Chinese outbound travel.