10:00 AM - 10:15 AM
[HCG19-05] Exploring tourist experience in rural historic sites: a comparative study of gassho-style villages based on online reviews
Keywords:tourist experience, cultural heritage tourism, UGC (user generated content), data mining
Gassho-style villages in Japan are recognized worldwide as heritage preservation and regional development success. The gassho-style house, known as gassho-zukuri, was first introduced to the world in 1939 by a German architect, Bruno Taut, who stayed in Japan from 1933 to 1936 and traveled widely to study Japanese architecture. Since then, the uniqueness and importance of gassho-zukuri have drawn worldwide attention (Shirakawa village office, 2016). The remote agriculture villages with the gassho-style houses on the Hida Highlands locate many well-preserved gassho-style architectures. Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama were registered as UNESCO World Cultural Heritage sites in 1995.
Cultural heritage tourism is essential to the community's economic development, especially in rural regions. The main idea of cultural heritage tourism is to preserve heritage and culture, share it with visitors, and benefit from tourism (Lussetyowati, 2015). Japan possesses one of the complete systems for promoting cultural heritage protection in the world community and has been heralded as a model for domestic regulation (Scott, 2006). In Japan, the agricultural villages' population decreased throughout the 2010s (Statistics Bureau, 2012). When an agricultural village disappears, in most cases, its tradition and culture also vanish. Conserving agricultural villages as cultural heritage sites is one way of preserving them for the future (Kuroda, 2019). Understanding the nature of tourism experiences is the key to the effective design and management of destinations.
User-generated content on web 2.0 sites such as Tripadvisor is widely used in tourism research (Stoleriu et al. 2019). Spontaneous tourists' online reviews coming from alternative sources provide specific insights into tourists' experiences that traditional interviews could overlook (Winter, 2018). TripAdvisor is the world's largest travel guidance platform. Travelers browse more than 1 billion reviews and opinions of nearly 8 million businesses, covering listings for restaurants, accommodations, vacation rentals, and attractions (Tripadvisor, 2023). The platform has maintained its reputation by policing the system to avoid false reviews despite past controversies. UGC applied in tourism and hospitality has been proven to be a critical and valuable data source for researching tourist experience and behavior, as it not only qualitatively but also quantitatively covers different aspects of many tourists' journeys (Kaosiri et al., 2019).
This study focuses on the tourist experience in gassho-style villages in Japan. It conducts text and image analysis of online user-generated content (UGC) of three rural historic village sites in Japan (Gokayama, Shirakawa-go, and Hida no Sato) based on English and Japanese reviews on Tripadvisor. To extract the key elements of gassho-style villages that attract the most attention of tourists; recognize the factors that relate to tourists' positive and negative emotions; and explore the differences between Japanese and international tourists' experiences. This study fills the empirical research gap on gassho-style villages based on online UGC. It will provide references and insights for research and practice in cultural heritage tourism.
Cultural heritage tourism is essential to the community's economic development, especially in rural regions. The main idea of cultural heritage tourism is to preserve heritage and culture, share it with visitors, and benefit from tourism (Lussetyowati, 2015). Japan possesses one of the complete systems for promoting cultural heritage protection in the world community and has been heralded as a model for domestic regulation (Scott, 2006). In Japan, the agricultural villages' population decreased throughout the 2010s (Statistics Bureau, 2012). When an agricultural village disappears, in most cases, its tradition and culture also vanish. Conserving agricultural villages as cultural heritage sites is one way of preserving them for the future (Kuroda, 2019). Understanding the nature of tourism experiences is the key to the effective design and management of destinations.
User-generated content on web 2.0 sites such as Tripadvisor is widely used in tourism research (Stoleriu et al. 2019). Spontaneous tourists' online reviews coming from alternative sources provide specific insights into tourists' experiences that traditional interviews could overlook (Winter, 2018). TripAdvisor is the world's largest travel guidance platform. Travelers browse more than 1 billion reviews and opinions of nearly 8 million businesses, covering listings for restaurants, accommodations, vacation rentals, and attractions (Tripadvisor, 2023). The platform has maintained its reputation by policing the system to avoid false reviews despite past controversies. UGC applied in tourism and hospitality has been proven to be a critical and valuable data source for researching tourist experience and behavior, as it not only qualitatively but also quantitatively covers different aspects of many tourists' journeys (Kaosiri et al., 2019).
This study focuses on the tourist experience in gassho-style villages in Japan. It conducts text and image analysis of online user-generated content (UGC) of three rural historic village sites in Japan (Gokayama, Shirakawa-go, and Hida no Sato) based on English and Japanese reviews on Tripadvisor. To extract the key elements of gassho-style villages that attract the most attention of tourists; recognize the factors that relate to tourists' positive and negative emotions; and explore the differences between Japanese and international tourists' experiences. This study fills the empirical research gap on gassho-style villages based on online UGC. It will provide references and insights for research and practice in cultural heritage tourism.