Thematic analysis of reviews on the air quality of tourist destinations from a sentiment analysis perspective

Abstract

This thematic analysis examines whether reviews on transactional and social media websites can reflect the air quality of a tourist destination. We used linguistic and sentiment analysis methods to establish an analytical framework for assessing the credibility of the reviews with sufficiency and consistency analyses. We collected Ctrip and Sina Weibo reviews to analyze the sentiment values using deep learning and Baidu sentiment dictionary methods. We found that although the sentiment value of the Ctrip transactional comments on air quality was high, they hardly reflected reality. Conversely, the Sino Weibo social media comments were highly credible, despite their low sentiment values. Tourists' perception of air quality is mainly affected by intangible air factors (such as pollutants), then tangible air factors, hydrology factors and terrain factors. The study uses online reviews to analyze air quality and provides a reference for the environmental management of destinations and decision making among tourists.