Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 Background and Motivation

Tourism trend is changing due to development of information technology, especially development of Social Networking Services (SNS) and mobile devices. By using these technologies, users of mobile devices can obtains any information anytime, anywhere. In recent years, word of mouth on SNS is one of the most important sources of sightseeing information tourists obtain: SNS users are able to share their own information about their experience and things they obtained during their sightseeing with photos, movies, and text. Another user is easily able to obtain information about interesting sightseeing spots from the shared information on SNS and decide spots they visit in advance.

While tourists obtain freely huge amount of and various shared sightseeing information from SNS, however, this situation causes another problem: Since tourists visits sightseeing spots only where they decided to visit in advance based on shared information on SNS, staying time in a sightseeing area becomes short. Tourists may feel that the variety of their sightseeing activities are extended because they obtain a huge amount of sightseeing information and decide their behaviors based on it. However, it can be said that their activities are restricted by the impact of specific influential word of mouth. That is, they visit only specific sightseeing spots, and do not stroll around the spots.

Basically, the purpose of sightseeing is to have an unusual experience and to make a new discovery during interaction with eternal environment outside of daily life zone. However, as mentioned above, giving useful and huge amount of sightseeing information before sightseeing may prevent having opportunities of such an experience and a discovery. From these motivation, we consider an approach to share sightseeing information in order to encourage tourists to take various sightseeing behaviors without the restriction of their activities.

1.2 Our Contributions

In this paper, we propose a process that tourists share their sightseeing information after they arrive at a final destination of sightseeing. That is, tourists share or browse information on sightseeing around the destination only in the restricted area at the destination. This idea are derived from the fact that tourists visit only sightseeing spots which were decided to visit in advance from shared information. By doing this, tourists will stroll spontaneously from what they saw, heard, or felt during their sightseeing until the destination. The information shared at destination sightseeing spots is a sightseeing map representing the sightseeing history of a tourist.

In this research, in order to verify the usefulness of our proposal, an evaluation experiment using a prototype system was conducted. In this experiment, the comparison was made between sightseeing using the general electronic map service and the proposed system. Moreover, we compared the sightseeing behaviors between the cases where the information of the tourist maps was browsed before and after sightseeing. We show that making a sightseeing history map during the sightseeing made the participants walked in the wide area, and browsing the shared history maps after the sightseeing encouraged the participants to take a walk around various places in the current and the next sightseeing.

2 Related Works

The theory of the “Benefits of Inconvenience” (BI) proposed by Kawakami, which suggests that inconvenient things bring benefit in some cases [1]. With advances in information technology, the notion of “anytime, anywhere” is taken for granted in modern society. However, there are benefits that has been overlooked because of too much emphasis on convenience and efficiency. The research group of Kawakami proposed design guidelines of the BI [2]. Our proposal in this paper is included in the framework of the BI because it encourages tourists to take a walk by forcing inconvenience of restricted sharing information.

Also in the research area for sightseeing support, there are some proposals based on the BI. As encouraging tourists to take various sightseeing behaviors, in the research area about navigation systems, there are some studies about restricting provided information, such as detailed map information [3] or information on recommended spots [4].

As research to promote sightseeing behavior by restricting the sharing of information, there is work by Takagi et al. [5]. They proposed a system called “Journey Notes” that can be accessed by tourists only in a restricted area around an access point. Access points are set in sightseeing areas, and users who are about 20 m around the points can upload and read information on the virtual notes. They showed the effect of encouraging users to visit places of access points to obtain information by such the constraints.

Our proposal is very similar to the research by Takagi et al. in terms of restricting places to share information on sightseeing. However, in the existing work, there is no discussion about places to set access points. The purpose of the existing work is to guide tourists to places where they can share information. In our proposal, the location to share information is set to a destination, where tourists will visit. We aim for tourists to take a walk around various places to share valuable information at the destination.

3 Proposal

3.1 Outline of the Proposal

In this research, we aim to encourage tourists to take a walk in an area around a final destination. Currently, tourists can obtain information on sightseeing spots in advance and visit only the spots that they are interested in. So, we propose the sharing information on sightseeing spots after sightseeing. That is, we give the restriction that the sharing and the browsing of information on sightseeing spots can only be done at spots that are main destinations of tourists (see Fig. 1). By doing this, tourists will stroll spontaneously from what they saw, heard, or felt during their sightseeing until the destination. Since they do not receive behavioral constraints from prior information, we expect that tourists take various activities in an area around a destination although restricting the sharing location of information is inconvenient for tourists in terms that information can not be browsed anytime and anywhere.

The information shared at destinations is a sightseeing map representing the sightseeing history of a tourist. In the sightseeing map, tourists record locations, photographs, and their experience on interesting spots. These are information shared as a word of mouth for general SNS. In SNS, it is said that there is a psychology that the “I want to deliver valuable information” or “Information I delivered has good value” in users who upload words of mouth. Even in this research proposal, we hope that psychology, that tourists wants to provide valuable sightseeing information that they would like to recommend to others, will work. If such psychology works, it is motivated to explore various sightseeing spots before tourists arrive at destinations.

Also, at destinations after sightseeing, tourists can browse sightseeing maps created by others, so they will get information on sightseeing spots that they did not notice during their sightseeings. We expect this will lead to tourists’ motivation for sightseeing next time. Masuda et.al. state that producing incomplete sightseeing encourages tourists to visit sightseeing area again [6]. Their work is based on the Zeigarnik effect [7]. The Zeigarnik effect, which is shown by Russian psychologist Zeigarnik, is that “incomplete thinks remember more than that was completed”. In the research of Masuda et al., they creates uncompleted feelings by introducing sightseeing spots that tourists passed near but not yet visited, and presenting photos of spots a little different from the time of visit. In our proposal, we also expect that if tourists browse information on interesting sightseeing spots after sightseeing, they can be further promoted their motivation of sightseeing.

Fig. 1.
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Outline of our proposal

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3.2 Prototype System

We explain the system constructed based on our proposal described in the previous section. This system was developed as an application running on an Android device. As an electronic map, we used Google Map.

Figure 2 shows the examples of system screens in our system. On the initial screen (Fig. 2(a)), the location of the destination is displayed on the electronic map. An user can create a sightseeing history map for sharing at the destination only within a certain distance away from the destination. This range is assumed to be large enough to stroll. Within this range, the user can register some recommended sightseeing spots on the map. When registering a spot, the user taps a location to register on the map, takes a picture and inputs a comment for the spot (Fig. 2(c)). Inputting pictures and comments in optional. By repeating the same processes, the user registers multiple sightseeing spots on the map (Fig. 2(b)). When the user enters a range where the sightseeing history map around the destination can be shared, it is possible to share the created map at the destination.

Also within this range, the user can also browse the shared sightseeing maps. At the time of browsing, a list of the thumbnails of the shared sightseeing maps is displayed on the screen (Fig. 2(d)). When the user selects a sightseeing map to be viewed, he/she can see the details of the sightseeing spots registered on the map. The screen of viewing the map is the same as Fig. 2(b).

Fig. 2.
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Examples of screens of our prototype system

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4 Verification Experiment

4.1 Evaluation Points

The goal of this experiment is to verify the effect of sharing sightseeing history maps at a final destination of sightseeing on behaviors of participants. Concretely, we focused on the following three evaluation points:

  1. 1.

    Does browsing shared history maps before a sightseeing make behavior of a participant restricted?

  2. 2.

    Does making a sightseeing history map during a sightseeing make a participant walked in a wide area?

  3. 3.

    Does browsing shared history maps after a sightseeing encourage participants to take a walk around various places in the next sightseeing?

To investigate these three points, we used two systems: One is an electronic map system (i.e., Google Maps) and the other is our proposal system. Since each participant used these two systems, we set two areas in which participants stroll freely as the experiment area. On the first day of the experiment, a participant strolled in one of the areas using the electronic map system, and after that, he/she strolled in the other area using our system. Moreover, after about a week, he/she strolled in the second area again using our system. We took a log of movement history of each participant, and asked participants to complete a questionnaire after each sightseeing. The questionnaire had the following questions:

  1. 1.

    Did you want to look for and find interesting sightseeing spots? (5 grades)

  2. 2.

    Did you want to walk in an area or along a street where you usually do not walk? (5 grades)

  3. 3.

    Did you walk a lot more than usual sightseeing? (5 grades)

  4. 4.

    Do you want to walk a lot in the next sightseeing? (5 grades)

Fig. 3.
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Sightseeing areas for the experiments and the spots shown on the shared history maps.

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4.2 Methods

In this research, we set two areas as the experiment area: One is Gion and Sanzyo area (area A) and the other is Gion and Kiyomizu area (area B) in Kyoto. In these areas, there are many streets and sightseeing spots suitable for casual stroll. The final destination spot in the area A is Kyoto International Manga Museum, and one in the area B is Kiyomizu-dera temple. The start position in the both areas are the same point, Gion-Shizyo station. It takes 30 min on foots from the start position of the station to each destination in each area. Figure 3 shows the simple map for each area. In the figures, the bold and dotted lines show the wide streets, and the thin and solid lines show the streets with a lot of sightseeing spots where many tourists stroll. The double circles are the destination spots and the double squares are the start positions.

In this experiment, the participants browsed the shared sightseeing history maps before or after their experiments. We created the shared maps beforehand by taking photos and adding comments for some spots using our system. The number of the shared maps for each area is three. The black circles in the Fig. 3 shows the registered spots on the shared maps. The area A has some shopping streets, and so the restaurants and the souvenirs were shown in the shared maps. In the area B, there are many temples and shrines. Then in the shared maps for the area B, these temples, shrines, and streets between them were introduced.

Table 1. Flow of the experiments for each participant.
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We conducted the experiment with 4 participants, who were college students (2 males and 2 female), called participant a, b, c, and d. Table 1 shows the process of the experiments for each participant. In the first day of the experiment, the participant strolled in one of areas using the electronic map system. The system showed only map information and the location of the final destination. Please note that the system did not provide the route information, such as the shortest path to the destination. After that, we conducted the second experiment using our system in the other area on the same day. As explained in the previous section, our system did not also provide the route information to the participants. In the second experiment, the half of the participants browsed the shared history maps using our system before their stroll. So, they could know the information about sightseeing spots in the area (shown in the Fig. 3) by reading the shared maps. The other half did not browse the shared maps before their second stroll, but they checked the shared maps after their strolls at the final destination. Moreover, to verify the behavior of participants in the next sightseeing in the same area, we conducted the same experiments in the same area using our system after about a week. Also in the third experiments, the half of the participants browsed the shared map before their stroll, and the other half did not.

This experiment were approved by the ethics committee of Osaka Institute of Technology. Before the experiments, we explained the purpose and the flow of the experiments, and obtained their consent to participate. After that, we showed and explained how to use the electronic map system and our system. In each of the experiment, we did not set a time for their stroll and the number of spots registered in our system. We asked the participants to stroll freely in the areas, and to arrive at the spots of the final destination. The participants were conducted each of the experiments separately. That is, the days of the experiments are different.

Table 2. Attribute of the participants.
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4.3 Results of Movement Histories and Questionnaire

Table 2 shows the attribute of the participants. Three participants except the participant a post and browse the shared information on the SNS. As for the experience of sightseeing, three participants go sightseeing some times every year, and the participant c has low frequency of sightseeing. The participant a and c do not almost visit the sightseeing area in this experiments. On the other hand, the other participants have some experience of sightseeing there.

Figures 4, 5, 6 and 7, show the histories of the movements of the participant a, b, c, and d on the maps in Fig. 3 respectively. In these figures, the solid and bold arrows show the histories of the movements in the first day of the experiments. That is, the movement histories were taken in the first and the second experiment. The dotted and bold arrows show the movement histories taken in the third experiment. In the Fig. 5, there is no dotted arrows. The reason of this is that the participant b walked the same streets in the second and the third experiments. The black stars indicate the locations of spots registered in our system by the participants in the second experiment, and the white stars indicated thats in the third experiment. Table 3 shows the results of the questionnaire. In the questionnaire, we asked each questions in the 5-scale grades, in which 1 corresponds to strongly disagree and 5 corresponds to strongly agree. In this section, we discuss the results of our experiment based on the evaluation points in the Sect. 4.1.

Fig. 4.
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The movement histories and the registered spots of sightseeing history map of the participant a.

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Fig. 5.
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The movement histories and the registered spots of sightseeing history map of the participant b. The participant b followed the same streets in the second and the third strolls.

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First, we discuss about the effect of browsing the shared history maps before a sightseeing on the restriction of sightseeing behavior. In this experiment, the participants b and d checked the shared maps before their strolls in the second and the third experiments, and the participants a and c did not. As see the Figs. 5(b) and 6(b) , the participant b and d walked along the streets where the many spots registered on the shared maps. Especially, the participant d changed the direction to the registered spots. On the other hand, except the second experiment of the participant a, the participant a and c walked different streets from the participant b and d. They walked the narrow lanes and registered the interesting spots on their maps which were not shown on the shared maps. The reason that the participant a followed the almost same streets as the participant b in the second experiment is that these streets are famous and popular streets for tourists and there were many tourists there. From these facts above, it can be said that if the participants browse the shared maps before their sightseeing then they tend to visit the spots registered on the shared maps.

Fig. 6.
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The movement histories and the registered spots of sightseeing history map of the participant c.

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Fig. 7.
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The movement histories and the registered spots of sightseeing history map of the participant d.

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Table 3. Answers for the questionnaire.
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The second evaluation point is whether making a sightseeing history maps during a sightseeing makes the participants walk in a wide area. For this point, we compare the movement histories using the electronic map system and our system in the same areas. In the area A, the participants a and b used the electronic map system. From the Figs. 4(a) and 5(a), it can be seen that they followed the similar streets. As for the participant c and d who used our system in the area A, while the participant d also walked the similar streets to thats of a and b in the second experiment (see Fig. 7(b)), they walked the different streets from them in the other three cases. We can see the same tendency for the results in the area B. The participants c and d using the electronic map system in the area B walked along the main streets directly to the destination. On the other hand, the participant a and b walked the different streets from them and walked the narrow streets avoiding the main streets. In the results of the questionnaire (see Table 3), except the answers of the participant b, the other participants answered the better or equal scores for our system to thats for the electronic map system. But note that there are little differences between the answers for the electronic map system and our system in the results of the questionnaire.

To discuss about the last evaluation point, we compare the movement histories in the second and the third experiments. The participant b and d walked the same or the similar streets in that two times. Especially, the participant b followed the completely same route. As mentioned above for the first evaluation point, they walked near the spots shown in the shared maps because they saw these information before their sightseeing. As for the participant a and c who browsed the shared map after their strolls, they walked the different routes in that two times. Notice that in the third experiments, they did not pass near the registered spots despite seeing the information about them after their strolls in the second experiments. After their second strolls, they talked about the information about the shared maps such that “there are many spots I have not visited yet” or “I know that some streets also can be good recommended spots to others”. From these facts, we consider that they could not remember the details of the information on the shared maps but they had the feeling that there seems to be interesting something. As the results, they followed the different routes in the third experiments from thats in the second experiments.

From the discussion above, it can be said the following results:

  1. 1.

    Browsing shared history maps before a sightseeing makes behavior of a participant restricted.

  2. 2.

    Making a sightseeing history map during a sightseeing makes a participant walked in a wide area.

  3. 3.

    Browsing shared history maps after a sightseeing encourages participants to take a walk around various places in the next sightseeing.

5 Conclusions

In this research, we proposed a system to share information about a sightseeing as a sightseeing history map at a final destination. To verify this proposal, we conducted the experiments with 4 participants. As the results, it was shown that making a sightseeing history map during the sightseeing made the participants walked in the wide area. Moreover, browsing the shared history maps after the sightseeing encouraged the participants to take a walk around various places in the current and the next sightseeing.

Future tasks are to conduct the experiment with more number of participants to obtain a lot of experimental data, and to apply this system to other sightseeing area.