The Study of Using VGI to Analyze the Tourist Satisfaction About Taichung Jazz Festival

Shunjen Lai

doi:10.11648/j.ash.20180402.11

Abstract

Since 2003, the Taichung Jazz Festival has become one of the major annual events regularly held in Taichung City. The number of tourists and the tourism business opportunities brought by this festival has been increasing year by year, even reaching more than 1 million participating tourists/times ever since 2015. In terms of traditional assessment methods for great events, we used to obtain analytic such as visitor satisfaction or the number of people through questionnaires. However, different levels of issues concerned by tourists cannot be easily understood through standardized questionnaires. Due to the popularization of online platforms and smart phones, people tend to voluntarily provide some when they are participating in an activity. Such coordinated is namely Volunteered geographic information (VGI), ex. check-in created by anyone. People can show their positive and negative messages by expressing their words about certain places (food, landscape, etc.), which can can make up for the shortcomings of traditional questionnaires. In this study, through the API provided by Facebook and by writing a web crawler program, we downloaded a total of 46,260 comments/messages written by people during the period of the Jazz Festival. Then, by means of Chinese word segmentation and through keywords, statistical analyses were conducted on two indicators shown by these tourists regarding the Jazz Festival: 1. Satisfaction about this event: To analyze people's positive and negative evaluations of the handling of this event, as well as their feelings; 2. Suggestions for event improvements: To analyze all aspects of concrete problems and suggestions for improvements proposed by people for this event. In this study, through collecting VGI data and constructing unstructured analysis methods, explorations were made, concerning people's intuitive feeling about Jazz Festival from a mass perspective. In addition, comparisons and analyses against traditional questionnaires were conducted. Therefore, the findings of this study can serve as a reference for future leisure activity surveys combined with VGI data analyses.

Highlights

Tourism Industry is a very important part of urban economy
Through the semantic extraction of Volunteered geographic information" (VGI) and community big data, this study obtained the semantic data of the specific issues raised beforehand, immediately and afterwards in the process of a large-scale activity
Due to the questions asked by the organizer and due to visitors' time, it would be more difficult to obtain in-depth and concrete opinions through such questionnaires

Summary

Introduction

Tourism Industry is a very important part of urban economy. It belongs to Quaternary Industry. Each city allocates its budgets according to its own financial conditions and its planning about the tourism industry It can invest in public facilities, develop and construct sightseeing spots, or organize themes and itineraries according to the characteristics of the city. It uses various kinds of urban marketing methods to enhance the visibility of the city and promote tourist crowds, in order to create incomes and benefits for its urban economy. In order to flourish the tourism industry, we need well-organized planning, resource allocation, construction of various hardware and software, ShunJen Lai et al.: The Study of Using VGI to Analyze the Tourist Satisfaction About Taichung Jazz Festival convenient transportation networks, and readily-accessible public information, so as to create bright spots, emit charms and expand urban marketing, etc., all of which require the coordination and cooperation between various governmental departments. What's more, full achievements will not be reached without the assistance from non-governmental resources

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Discussion

Conclusion