Network dynamics of tourism development in South Korea

Abstract

This study utilizes network analysis to trace the evolution in the organizations of tourism development during South Korea’s transition from a developing to a developed country spanning the period from 1945 to 1999. This is studied by examining changes within a network of organizations as their means and objectives evolve. Data are drawn from news articles that deal with tourism and development from 1945 to 1999, and coded into organizations, development-related means, and objectives. Two-mode and a one-mode metric network analysis and correspondence analysis of coded data were undertaken. The results show the dynamic nature of networks interacting among organizations along with their means and objectives. Furthermore, this study states that the “social embeddedness” of the tourism network became stronger over time, leading to further development opportunities.

Keywords:

• network dynamics
• evolution of tourism development
• South Korea
• tourism in transition
• social embeddedness of tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Noel Scott http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8770-2563

Notes

1. The density (d) is expressed as follows:

where g is no. of nodes and k is no. of lines.

2. This is usually expressed as follows:

where C_x (P_i) is any centrality measure of point i and C_x (P_*) is the largest such measure in the network.

3. Power centrality is formally defined as follows:

where is a constant to standardize the centrality index, is the level of interaction, and is the adjacency matrix.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea [grant number NRF-2013S1A5B5A01030943].