Assessing technology adoption practices in Chinese theme parks: text mining and sentiment analysis

Purpose This study aims to examine technology adoption practices in Chinese theme parks by leveraging text mining and sentiment analysis approaches on actual theme park customers’ online reviews. Design/methodology/approach The study text mined a total of 65,518 reviews of 490 Chinese theme parks with the aid of the Python program. Further, it computed sentiment scores of the customer reviews associated with the ratings of each categorized technology practice applied in the theme parks. Findings The study identified two major categories of technology applications in theme parks: supporting and experiential technologies. Multiple statistical tests confirmed that supporting technologies consisted of three types: intelligent services, ticketing and in-park transportation. Experiential technologies further included five aspects of technologies according to Schmitt’s strategic experiential modules (SEMs): sense, feel, act, think and relate. Originality/value The study findings contribute to the current understanding of theme park visitors’ perceptions of technology adoption practices and provide insightful implications for theme park practitioners who intend to invest in high technology solutions to deliver a better customer experience.

What is a Theme Park? A Synthesis and Research Framework

Theme parks have attracted extensive scholarly attention within and outside the tourism literature. These parks have been studied from various stances, yet a uniform definition and integrated framework remain lacking for theme park research and practice. Based on a comprehensive review and research synthesis, this article defines a theme park as a dedicated space featuring five main characteristics: thematic identity, closed space with controlled access, hybrid consumption, performative labor, and merchandising. This article further considers multidisciplinary lenses in theme park studies, particularly in terms of how these five characteristics can be assessed. A research framework covering four domains (industry, tourists/visitors, environment, and impacts) is accordingly proposed to inspire theoretical advances, identify research gaps, promote relevant research, and facilitate managerial practices. This article encourages scholars to move beyond current empirical confines and shape the interdisciplinary future of theme park tourism research.

New insights on satisfaction prototypes for segmentation: Focus on customer experience

This paper tests a conceptual segmentation using a criterion outlined by Oliver based on the satisfaction prototypes customers may follow. The empirical study was conducted with a sample of theme park visitors grouped into four satisfaction prototypes/segments. Results show the presence of important differences by groups in terms of both the effects of perceived value dimensions on satisfaction and the level of satisfaction by segment, supporting the proposed approach. The findings are valuable for a better identification of key drivers of segments’ satisfaction, which will be helpful to redesign service experiences to better fit the varying preferences of modern consumers.

Scale Development of Non-Smoking Theme Park Visitors’ Emotion and Its Connation

Objectives: To advance consumer emotion research in tourism, it is necessary to develop practical and context-relevant emotion measures. This paper aims to discover the connation of consumer emotion of non-smoking theme park visitors and develops emotion scale and provides theoretical and practical suggestions for theme parks. This paper adopted two studies and combined qualitative and quantitative research methods with Shanghai Disneyland as the research objective. In study one, this paper develops theme parks visitors’ emotion scale based on literature review and three focus group interviews. In study two, this paper verifies the scale based on 215 on-site effective questionnaires. The final emotion scale has four dimensions, love(cared, loved, romantic, happiness and warm-hearted), joy(content, happy, satisfied and joy), surprise(surprise, exciting, indulged and fantastic)and unpleasantness(anger, sad, disappointed and worried). This emotion scale can be used as an effective tool to measure theme park’s visitor emotion since it considers theme park’s character and consumer experience.