Big data or small data? A methodological review of sustainable tourism

Abstract

Research in the field of sustainable tourism is increasingly important due to significant growth in tourism industries and the unsustainable impacts incurred. Innovation in sustainable tourism studies is required to meet a number of challenges including socio-ecological impacts; the critical turn in tourism research; and the growth of ICTs, mobile technologies and big data analytics. These shifts in particular are transforming the field and creating new research opportunities. This article seeks to identify potentially new methodological areas of application to sustainable tourism studies for both quantitative and qualitative methods. A range of methods are reviewed, focusing on big data (e.g. mobile device signaling, GPS, social media and search engine data) that elucidates wider patterns of tourist movement, as applied to forecasting travel demands and sustainable management of a destination. Three novel “small data” methods are also discussed, comprising visual methods, autoethnography and qualitative GIS, that provide deeper, contextual insights into the drivers, dynamics and impacts of sustainable tourism. We consider how expansive qualitative methodologies might yield potentially important insights concealed by existing methodologies. Furthermore, we argue that combined big data and small data approaches can address methodological imbalance and generate mutually reinforcing insights at a number of levels.

Keywords:

• Big data
• small data
• sustainable tourism
• mobility
• research methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project is partly funded by Chinese National Nature Science Foundation (41571133; 4171530650) and European Research Council (336665).

Notes on contributors

Feifei Xu

Dr. Feifei Xu is a professor in Southeast University, China, and a reader in University of Lincoln, UK. Her main research interests include sustainable tourism, human nature interactions as well as digital tourism.

Nicholas Nash

Dr. Nicholas Nash is a research fellow in the School of Psychology, Cardiff University. His main research interests include social psychological and environmental psychology.

Lorraine Whitmarsh

Prof. Lorraine Whitmarsh is a professor in the School of Psychology, Cardiff University. Her main research interests include psychological and social dimensions of environmental, risk and sustainability issues.