Electronic Word-of-Mouth and Tourist Satisfaction in Rural Tourism in Schist Villages

Introduction

Population in urban areas has been steadily increasing worldwide compared to rural areas, emphasizing socioeconomic differences (Costa & Chalip, 2005). Many national and regional authorities promote rural tourism to counter this trend, bringing hope to rural communities. This type of tourism has been growing over the last 25 years as urban inhabitants seek wellness, quietness, and outdoor activities that are impossible in urban areas due to traffic, pollution, and lack of time (Dashper, 2014). Tourism in rural areas (TRA) in Portugal is considered a driving force for the sustainability and development of local communities. Portugal also holds substantial asymmetry in economic activities, population distribution, and cultural and social issues between urban and rural areas, justifying the investment in rural tourism (Agapito, 2012; Valente & Figueiredo, 2003).

The tourism industry has embraced technology to leverage business (Moro et al., 2017b). The increasing number of Internet users worldwide, empowered by the technological solutions offered by Web 2.0, where users are the major contributors of Internet content, has led to both social networks, from which Facebook is the most prominent example, and to online reviews’ platforms, such as TripAdvisor (Moro et al., 2018). The latter is an example of a specialized platform devoted to hospitality and tourism, as it allows users to write reviews about tourist units such as hotels and restaurants, including quantitative scores on several features (e.g., service and food). The abovementioned platforms belong to social media, a new type of online media where consumers read feedback from others to make judged decisions on their next purchase. These interactions between users online are labeled eWOM, defined by Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) as “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet” (p. 39).

Social media offers a potential source of relevant information about consumers. Therefore, scholars have devoted attention to extracting knowledge from online platforms. Some authors have analyzed the quantitative ranks granted by users (e.g., Jeong & Jeon, 2008; Vermeulen & Seegers, 2009; Moro et al., 2017a), while others analyzed the comments written (Marcheggiani et al., 2014; Calheiros et al., 2017). However, the textual comments published on those platforms hold subjectivity inherent to human language, which can induce bias during its analysis. Opinion mining has been developed to deal with knowledge extraction from written opinions. Sentiment polarity classification is a task within opinion mining devoted to classifying textual contents according to the sentiments expressed by users (Jiménez-Zafra et al., 2016). Although there are many studies on tourists’ online behavior on social media, research focused on rural tourism is still scarce (Melo et al., 2017). Furthermore, the localized nature of rural context justifies specific studies for each case.

This study aims to understand the eWOM phenomenon of the successful case of Schist Villages in Portugal. Notably, the focus is the lodging offer, as online reviews considerably impact accommodation product decisions compared to other tourist products (Gretzel & Yoo, 2008). Accordingly, three main research questions are proposed:

• RQ.1: How is eWOM perceived in rural tourism in Portugal?

• RQ.2: What features influence most of the review scores in hospitality and consequently contribute most to rural tourists’ satisfaction?

• RQ.3: How can this knowledge be worthwhile for rural accommodation managers?