Tourism's increasing contribution to climate change, especially through the use of air travel, is now acknowledged. This study seeks to explore tourists' knowledge and awareness of aviation's impact on the climate, their sense of personal responsibility and their reactions to specific climate change policies. A focus group approach -informed by interviews with international tourists leaving New Zealand -was chosen to involve tourists in discussing climate change and travel. In the focus groups, three policy options were discussed: voluntary initiatives, a global air travel charge and a per capita carbon budget. The global air travel tax emerged as a realistic compromise between restricting travel and achieving emissions reduction. When discussing individual responsibility for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, tourists distinguished between their travel and their everyday life, where responsibility for mitigation was perceived to be greater. The value of freedom to travel is firmly established in the minds of many tourists and limiting travel is considered unacceptable by the (hyper) mobile tourists who participated in this research. Only major societal changes to bring about behavioural change seem likely to reduce air travel's contribution to climate change.
Advances in technology have fundamentally changed how information is produced and consumed by all actors involved in tourism. Tourists can now access different sources of information, and they can generate their own content and share their views and experiences. Tourism content shared through social media has become a very influential information source that impacts tourism in terms of both reputation and performance. However, the volume of data on the Internet has reached a level that makes manual processing almost impossible, demanding new analytical approaches. Sentiment analysis is rapidly emerging as an automated process of examining semantic relationships and meaning in reviews. In this article, different sentiment analysis approaches applied in tourism are reviewed and assessed in terms of the datasets used and performances on key evaluation metrics. The article concludes by outlining future research avenues to further advance sentiment analysis in tourism as part of a broader Big Data approach.
Inbound tourist arrivals into China have been declining in recent years, possibly in response to increasing levels of urban air pollution. To examine Westerners' contemporary views on China as a travel destination, with a particular focus on air pollution, this research surveyed 600 US and Australian residents. An online panel survey collected data on cognitive and affective destination image, cognitive and affective risk perceptions, intention to visit China and key demographic variables. The findings show that, while China's cognitive image attributes were perceived positively, potential travelers expressed negative views about travel risks in China in general and about air quality in particular. Importantly, feelings towards the risk of air quality had a significant negative impact on destination image as well as intention to visit China. The research contributes to theory by highlighting the importance of considering affective risk perceptions in destination image studies. While some market segments seemed less sensitive to air pollution than others, this paper concludes that unless China proactively addresses the problem of air pollution, for example by seeking to stimulate positive feelings, international arrivals may continue to be compromised.
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