Opportunity identification is the core issue of entrepreneurship research, and it is also an important prerequisite for the development of rural tourism. Although entrepreneurial opportunity identification research has achieved more results, there is still a lack of empirical research on rural tourism single industry. Based on social capital and experience learning perspectives, using data from 139 “Minsu” in China, which is now officially called homestay inn in China, we empirically examine the effects of social capital and previous experience on entrepreneurial opportunity identification. The results indicate that scales of embedded network and resources of social network have positively effect on entrepreneurial opportunity identification. The results also show previous industry experience and functional experience have positively effect on entrepreneurial opportunity identification, while previous working experience has no direct effect on entrepreneurial opportunity identification. These results show that entrepreneurs have a denser and larger scale of social network, they will have higher alertness for the potential entrepreneurial opportunities. These results also indicate that the entrepreneurs have more previous industry and functional experience, they will recognize more entrepreneurial opportunities.

본 연구에서는 ‘사회적 관광’과 ‘교차 준수’에 관한 이론적 분석을 통해 지역관광지원 정책과 지역통일교육콘텐츠 개발 전략을 통합할 수 있는 개념적 근거를 제시하고, 이를 부산지역 사례에 적용하기 위해 기존의 발굴된 관광자원을 재해석하고자 하였다. 이를 위해 본 연구에서는 부산학, 분단사 등에서 연구해 온 사료를 조사하였으며, 한국전쟁 당시부터 해당지역에서 거주해 온 지역민 10인에 대한 인터뷰를 통해 분단과 연관된 장소의 문화적 해설 방안 및 지역통일교육콘텐츠 개발 방안에 관하여 분석하였다. 공동체의 기억을 저장하는 기능을 지닌 장소성을 통해 사회적 자본을 축적하고 사회적 관광의 제도적 틀을 마련 하여야 할 것이다.

Since the late 1980s, information communication and technology (ICT) have reshaped the landscape of the tourism industry (Buhalis & Law, 2008). Thanks to the Web 2.0 technology, tourism practitioners have never been this close to their customers over social media platforms. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media refers to “a group of Internet-based applications which build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (p. 61). In line with this definition, electronic social networks, user-generated content aggregators, as well as location-based applications are all typical social media platforms, across which enable customers to create, edit, and share content. The increasingly growing social media platforms have greatly facilitated implementations of customer engagement strategies for organizations. As a psychological state, customer engagement is featured by interactive customer experiences with an organization, which encourage psychological, emotional, and physical investment a customer has in the organization (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017). In the tourism and hospitality context, customer engagement strategies are as critical in strengthening customer loyalty, trust, and brand evaluations (So, King, & Sparks, 2016). Useful insights have been gained relating to conceptualization and measurement scale of customer engagement, organizational and cultural obstacles to consumer engagement within hotel organizations (Chathoth et al., 2014), customer engagement in a social media context alongside the process of recognition (Cabiddu et al., 2014). Underlying the practical and theoretical significance of customer engagement lies the subjective nature of views on the social media platforms. Goh, Heng, and Lin (2014) recognized that engagement in social media brand communities positively lead to enhanced purchase expenditures through embedded information and persuasion. Quantitively, the persuasive effect of user generated information is at least 22 times more than that of marketer’s in terms of marginal effect. Although previous research has examined consequences of consumer engagement, there has been less attention paid to its causes. Meanwhile, as far as Brodie et al. (2011) were concerned, the persistency of consumer-brand engagement is contingent on an assessment of tangible and intangible costs against possible benefits such as product news and offers. Therefore, identification of these benefits can offer supplementary insights into current literature of consumer engagement. The current study utilizes the self-determination theory to uncover how engagement in social media activities is facilitated by consumers’ intrinsic motivators and what psychological benefits can consumer obtain from such engagement, as either psychological state or process (Brodie et al., 2011). Research subjects in this study are Chinese social media users. According to eMarketer’s (2017) estimated that more than 80 percent of Internet users in China (i.e., around 626 million people) accessed social networks regularly in 2017. The importance of tapping this massive market can never be overestimated.

Customers’ opinions on social network platforms are known to influence peer behaviour (Bai, 2011; Eirinaki, Pisal, & Singh, 2012). Customers are also known to be more engaged in sharing their experiences by writing online reviews and recommendations that may be useful to others (Cantallops & Salvi, 2014; Tang & Guo, 2015; Xu & Li, 2016). Actually, user-generated content (UGC) on social network platforms has emerged as an important source for understanding and managing consumers’ expectations, particularly using automated and semi-automated knowledge extraction techniques from text such as text mining and sentiment analysis (Zhang, Zeng, Li, Wang, & Zuo, 2009). This research analyses dimensions of online customer engagement and associated concepts in customers’ reviews through (i) a global sentiment analysis using positive, neutral and negative sentiments and (ii) a topic-sentiment analysis to capture latent topics in online reviews. Furthermore, it examines what influences customers to contribute their online reviews, beyond the features of each focal company or brand. The research methodology is based on a text mining approach, using the MeaningCloud tool. The study focuses on Yelp.com reviews and includes a random sample of 15,000 unique reviews of restaurants, hotels and nightlife entertainment in eleven cities in the USA. An innovative customer engagement dictionary is created, based on previously validated scales using known dimensions of engagement, experience, emotions and brand advocacy, and extended using WordNet 2.1 lexical database. The research findings reveal a high impact of the engagement cognitive processing dimension and hedonic experience on customers’ review endeavour. The study results further indicate that customers seem to be more engaged in positively advocating a company/brand than the contrary. The findings will help social network managers to reinforce their platforms.

This research article investigates the way eWOM in social media influences the formation of destination image through development of trust and satisfaction for the potential tourist. The research involved administering an 18-point questionnaire taking online reviews, tourist involvement, and eWOM, destination image components of trust and satisfaction as variables. Data was collected from 554 individuals forming a cross-section of social media users and analyzed using multi-variate techniques (Reliability, CFA, and SEM). Results indicate a positive and significant relationship between all except online review and destination trust and satisfaction. Indirect and direct effects indicate that eWOM fully mediates the relationship between destination satisfaction and involvement and partially mediates the relationship between destination trust and involvement. In the case of online reviews, eWOM acts as a full mediator between destination trust and destination satisfaction for the future traveler using social media. The study proposes that components of image vary depending upon the degree of involvement, volume online reviews and eWOM generated also termed as ‘virality’ and these in turn influence the intention to revisit or recommend a destination. The study highlights its utility for National Tourist Organizations (NTOs) and online travel intermediaries to enhance destination marketing efforts.

This study explores influences of the relationship between social capital and residents’ perception in a collective aspects, and also explores the differences of influence between two groups in 10 rural communities. This study conducts regression analysis with residents questionnaires, and analyzes the relationship of influence among the latent factors, and differences between the two groups. As a results, associational network and social trust factors of social capital are identified as the most important factor in the quality of life and residents’ attitudes. In addition, the differences in socio-cultural factor of quality of life and residents’ attitude between two groups are identified by comparison with the relationship between two groups, although the explanatory power of both groups is not high. To achieve a successful rural tourism based on the result of this study, rural tourism should consider the regional and demographic characteristics, such as age, occupations and education and so on. The major contribution of this study is to confirm that the impact of social capital on the residents’ perception would be different by regions in comparison with two groups, and it will be able to provide useful implication for the rural tourism development in the future.

The aim of this study is to analyze the green-tourism centrality considering spatial interaction using Gravity Model and social network method. The degree centrality and prestige centrality were applied as green-tourism centrality index. The rural amenity resources and human resources were counted as attraction factors, and a distance among villages was used as friction factor in gravity model. The weights of rural tourism amenity resources were calculated using the analytic hierarchy process(AHP) method and applied to evaluate green-tourism potentiality. The distance was measured with the shortest path among villages using geographic information system(GIS) network analysis. The spatial interaction from gravity model were employed as link weights between nodal points; a pair villages. Using the spatial interaction, the degree-centrality and prestige-centrality indices were calculated by social network analysis and demonstrated possibility of developing integrated green-tourism region centered on high centrality villages.

This study aimed to apply a methodological approach, 'social network analysis' to a case study for the understanding of relational structure among stakeholders related to green tourism development. By doing so, this study argued that it is important to identify stakeholder's network structure to help green tourism planners develop collaborative relationship among stakeholders. This study identified the stakeholders regarding a community-based festival development in the southern area of Korea, and investigated two types of networks among them: decision-making power relational and intimate network. Interviewer-administrated survey and in-depth interview were employed for data collection. The data was analyzed by SPSS (version 10.0) and Net-MinerII (version 2.5.0), and by constant comparison method. The result revealed that low different groups of the stakeholders were separated in the intimate networt and that the festival organizational body was not connected with other stakeholders in the decision-making power relational network. The existence of separated groups and weak relationship among the stakeholders appeared to relate to age-group differences, and different views on the festival between the stakeholders.