Understanding Clusters of Tourist Behavior Associations using Network Analysis

ABSTRACT

Identifying tourists’ associated behaviors enables industry practitioners to design suitable and efficient marketing strategies for different tourist groups. This study proposes the use of the relationships between tourists and their behaviors for constructing networks, and the adoption of the community detection method for clustering tourist behavior networks. With this approach, tourists’ behaviors can be clustered and visually investigated. Moreover, the evolution of groups of behaviors can be analyzed for obtaining insights into the origin of differences among different tourist groups. Survey data of visitors to Macao are used as a case study, and results provide valuable insights into tourists’ behaviors.

KEYWORDS:

• Network analysis
• community structure
• tourist behavior

Additional information

Funding

This project was partly supported by a research grant funded by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The work was completed when Gang Li was on ASL in Chinese Academy of Sciences.