Showcasing Leximancer in tourism and hospitality research: a review of Leximancer-based research published in tourism and hospitality journals during 2014–2020

ABSTRACT

This study showcases how the Leximancer program can be used to review Leximancer-based research published in tourism and hospitality journals during 2014-2020. Along with a Leximancer-generated concept map, a new tags' association visual analysis was also performed. This innovative method of analysis is a key contribution, as past Leximancer studies in hospitality and tourism have predominantly relied on thematic analysis only. An Insight Dashboard report that is based on Bayesian algebra algorithm in calculating Prominence Scores (PS) for key concepts and compound concepts emergent from the data, supplemented the visual analyses. Thirty-three (33) tourism and three (3) hospitality papers were analysed. The most common tourism context was China and Chinese tourism, and the most prominent phenomena were tourists' experiences, shopping experiences, tourists' evaluations and perceptions. Data for these research studies were predominantly obtained from online reviews, user-generated content (UGC), social media and news media. In the hospitality context, research studies used Leximancer to analyse sentiment, risk factors, and attitudes of frontline hotel employees. Tourism Management and Current Issues in Tourism, had the most papers which used Leximancer. Australian researchers were identified as the leaders in tourism research using Leximancer, followed by lead researchers from Portugal and China.

KEYWORDS:

• Leximancer
• tourism
• hospitality
• qualitative data analysis
• thematic analysis
• tags association analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Edmund Goh

Edmund Goh is an accomplished tourism and hospitality Researcher and Educator. Edmund has published in leading journals such as Tourism Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Vacation Marketing, Journal of Tourism and Travel Marketing, and Journal of Sustainable Tourism. Edmund sees his research as the nexus to address education and industry gaps.

Violetta Wilk

Violetta Wilk is a Lecturer and Researcher in Digital Marketing at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. Violetta's research expertise includes online brand advocacy (OBA), online communities and influence, big data analytics, data visualisation, user-generated content (UGC), interactive internet-based consumer behaviour, and the persuasive contextual attributes of online communication. Violetta is Accredited Leximancer Trainer and she specialises in data visualisation of large qualitative datasets using Leximancer.