A Comparative Study of Perceptions of Destination Image Based on Content Mining: Fengjing Ancient Town and Zhaojialou Ancient Town as Examples

Jiahui Ding, Zheng Tao, Mingming Hou, Dan Chen and Ling Wang ()
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Jiahui Ding: School of Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Zheng Tao: School of Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Mingming Hou: Department of Development and Planning, Shanghai Municipal Agricultural and Rural Commission, 100 Dagu Road, Shanghai 200003, China
Dan Chen: School of Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Ling Wang: School of Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 10, 1-19

Abstract: Ancient canal towns in Jiangnan have become important tourist destinations due to their unique water town scenery and historical value. Creating a unique tourist image boosts these ancient towns’ competitive edge in tourism and contributes significantly to their preservation and growth. The vast amount of data from social media has become an essential source for uncovering tourism perceptions. This study takes two ancient towns in Shanghai, Zhaojialou and Fengjing, as case study areas. In order to explore and compare the destination images of the towns, in the perception of tourists and in official publicity, machine learning approaches like word embedding and K-means clustering are adopted to process the comments on Sina Weibo and publicity articles, and statistical analysis and correspondence analysis are used for comparative study. The results reveal the following: (1) Using k-means clustering, destination perceptions were categorized into 16 groups spanning three dimensions, “space, activity, and sentiment”, with the most keywords in “activity” and the fewest in “sentiment”. (2) The perception of tourists often differs significantly from the official promotional materials. Official promotions place a strong emphasis on shaping the image of ancient towns based on their historical resources, presenting a more general picture. Tourist perception, which is fragmented, highlights emerging elements and the experiential activities, along with the corresponding emotional experiences. (3) Comparing the two towns, Fengjing Ancient Town stands out, with more diverse tourist perceptions and richer emotional experiences. This underscores the effectiveness of tourism activities that use space as a media to evoke emotions, surpassing the impact of the spaces themselves.

Keywords: ancient town; destination image; UGC; DMO; machine learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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