Does culture affect sentiments expressed in cruise tours’ eWOM?

ABSTRACT

The study aims to examine the sentiment differences in the content of cruise tour online reviews across North Americans and Europeans, as representing the two largest cruise markets. Dictionary-based sentiment analysis has been carried out on 1127 reviews on guided tours retrieved from TripAdvisor. The results indicate significant differences in the sentiment score of the reviews, with North Americans’ texts being more emotionally charged than the European ones. In addition, North Americans’ reviews conveyed a more positive affect and had a more subjective and intimate tone, while those written by Europeans contained a smaller amount of sentiment-bearing words and their tone was more objective. The study’s contribution lies in (i) providing evidence for the influence of culture on electronic word-of-mouth communication in terms of varying sentiment expression, (ii) demonstrating the effectiveness of sentiment analysis for recognizing cultural differences and (iii) enhancing the current understanding of cruisers’ tour experience.

摘要

本研究旨在考察两个最大的游船市场, 北美洲和欧洲游船的在线评论内容的情感差异。基于TripAdvisor (猫途鹰网) 的1127次旅游评论，进行了基于词典的情感分析。结果表明，在评论的情感得分有显著差异，北美洲的文本比欧洲的文本更情绪化。此外，北美的评论传达了更积极的影响，具有更为主观和亲密的语气，而欧洲人写的则含有较少的情感承载词，它们的语气更客观。这项研究的贡献在于（i）提供文化对网络口碑沟通在不同情绪表达方面的影响的证据，（ii）证明情感分析对识别文化差异的有效性; （iii）提高目前对游船旅游体验的理解。

KEYWORDS:

• Online reviews
• eWOM
• sentiments
• culture
• TripAdvisor

关键词:

• 在线评论
• 网络口碑
• 情感
• 文化
• 猫途鹰网

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Daniela Buzova http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3749-5639

Silvia Sanz-Blas http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6313-3167

Amparo Cervera-Taulet http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2424-2525

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Generalitat Valenciana [Grant Number AICO/2017/120] and the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte [Grant Number FPU14/03828].