A co-word analysis of museum tourism experience via hierarchy of needs: Case study of the China Block Printing Museum at Yangzhou

4.1 Sample selection

Established with 300,000 pieces of ancient woodblocks collected by (the former) Yangzhou’s Guangling Publishing House, the China Block Printing Museum at Yangzhou is a collection centre, academic research centre, and citizen cultural and leisure centre housing Chinese block engraved antique prints. The China Block Printing Museum is a significant tourist attraction at Yangzhou museum tours.

We used the websites of Chinese travel service providers Trip.com Group Limited (http://www.ctrip.com), Mafengwo (http://www.mafengwo.cn), and Lvmama (http://www.lvmama.com/) as sample websites. Trip.com Group Limited has more than 50 million members and numerous reviews in the comments section. Mafengwo, China’s largest travel experience exchange platform, encourages users to post new information, and these authentic reviews and travel notes helped improve research reliability. Lvmama is China’s leading self-service travel website, and it was included because of the high proportion of self-service travel in urban tourism.

Using GooSeeker software and the keyword ‘China Block Printing Museum at Yangzhou’, we conducted sample website crawling to extract data posted by users between February 2, 2015, and February 2, 2020. A total of 358 reviews were retrieved. Reviews unrelated to China Block Printing Museum at Yangzhou, repeated reviews, and reviews with no substantial value were filtered out; a total of 262 valid reviews (comprising more than 17,000 words) were extracted. This amount of data is considerable for a non-heritage museum in a second-tier tourist city, affirming the validity of the research. Nonetheless, a nonnegligible difference exists between this museum and other large-scale comprehensive museums, which emphasizes the necessity of the research.

The procedure for co-word analysis is well developed, with the key steps being: identifying high-frequency words – building a co-word matrix – statistical analysis – result interpretation. Referencing the source context, we used GooSeeker software to perform preprocessing such as word segmentation and screening of the sample data.

4.2 Hierarchy of needs categories

We used GooSeeker software with the sample data to calculate word frequencies. Based on a comprehensive investigation of the cumulative percentage of word frequency and feature saturation, the first 150 high-frequency words were compiled (Table 1) to represent the tourist experience of China Block Printing Museum at Yangzhou. The first 150 words were mainly noun, verbs, and adjectives which described experience-related targets such as exhibits and setting (described by nouns), activities and tourism benefits of the museum (described by verbs), and tourists’ experience (described by adjectives).

According to the hierarchy of needs analysis framework, the 150 words were classified to determine the basic unit of co-word analysis. Analysing the meaning of the words from the source context, the

two authors coded independently, and the consistency of the main category attained was 90.41%. After further evaluation of the codes, the hierarchy of needs categories for tourists who visited the China Block Printing Museum at Yangzhou were obtained and compiled (Table 1).

An analysis of the hierarchy of needs categories reveals that tourist perceptions of the China Block Printing Museum at Yangzhou centred on the dimension of ‘setting’, which accounted for 92.73% of the total frequency of occurrence. Under the category of setting, ‘internal setting’ comprising dimensions of facility, atmosphere, and service management had the highest frequency of occurrence (43.87%). Consisting of dimensions of exhibit and display and contributing to 27.79% of the frequency of occurrence, ‘object of appreciation’ was an essential aspect of the development of museum tourism and the core of the tourism activity organization [30]. Comprising dimensions of urban background, location, and transportation, ‘external setting’ accounted for 19.24% of the frequency of occurrence, clearly exerting a substantial influence on travel-related decision-making. Tourist perception of time was divided into three aspects, namely duration of visit (e.g. hour), timing of travel (e.g. New Year’s Day), and management system (e.g. closed on Mondays).

Category analysis indicated that tourists engaged in knowledge-seeking (65.2%) and leisure activities; 93.93% of tourist experiences was positive, and tourists mainly gained educational benefits from museum tours, with 94.12% of the reviews referencing benefits.

Based on the theoretical model, we conducted co-word analysis of activity-setting, activity-experience, setting-experience, and experience-benefit to explore relationships among the categories. First, we used GooSeeker software to identify the high-frequently co-occurring word pairs and calculate their cooccurrence frequency to form a co-word matrix. Second, we used the Ochiia coefficient to transform the co-word matrix into a similarity matrix. The calculation formula of Ochiia coefficient is as Eq. (1):

𝑂𝑎𝑏 = 𝑀𝑎𝑏 / ( M ⁢ a ⁢ M ⁢ b )(1)

Among them, Oab denotes the correlation coefficient between words a and b , Mab is the cooccurrence frequency of Words a and b , and Ma and Mb respectively represent the frequency of occurrence of words a and b . Correlation coefficient is a standardized description of the relationship between words; the correlation coefficient increases with the strength of the connection between two words. Intercategorical highly correlated word pairs (Ochiia coefficient ⩾ 0.5) are shown in Table 2.

Correlation analysis indicated that in the activity-setting relationship, ‘tourism’ and ‘woodblock’ were highly correlated, which reflects the core of the tourism activity organization. In the setting-experience relationship, ‘printing technique’ and ‘fun’ were highly correlated, indicating that tourists were interested in the theme of experience; ‘woodblock’ was highly correlated with ‘personal feeling’ and ‘experience’, implying that block printing was considered the core experience by tourists; both ‘unforgettable’ was highly correlated with ‘on-site’, ‘craftsmanship’, ‘demonstration’, and ‘shifu’ and ‘disappointment’ was highly correlated with ‘craftsmanship’, ‘demonstration’, and ‘shifu’, reflecting that on-site demonstration of block printing craftsmanship by a shifu invited by the museum left a deep impression on tourists and was directly correlated with travel experience quality. The high correlation between ‘shifu’ with ‘amusing’ and ‘surprise’ reflects the significance of dynamic display in an intangible cultural heritage museum. The high correlation between ‘special exhibition’ and ‘surprise’ reflects the highly positive experience tourists perceived from elaborately organized exhibitions. Finally, the high correlation between ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘amusing’ indicates that the museum’s special holiday events were attractive. In the experience-benefit relationship, ‘broaden the horizon’ was highly correlated with ‘surprise’, ‘unforgettable’, and

‘disappointment’, demonstrating that many museum visitors wished to enhance their knowledge. No highly correlated related word pair was observed in the activity-experience relationship, which indicates that overall tourist experience with the museum activities was not impressive. Lastly, we subtracted the Ochiia coefficient by 1 to convert the correlation matrix into a dissimilarity matrix and performed a multidimensional scale analysis to explore the internal structure of the relationships between categories.

We employed SPSS 23.0 to conduct a multidimensional analysis of the dissimilarity matrix comprising activity-setting, activity-experience, setting-experience, and experience-benefit cooccurring keywords. The results were as follows.

5.1 Improve ‘participation-dynamic setting’ to create a space for tourists to experience in person

The museum may make sufficient use of the cultural venue on the east side of the museum’s first floor, where block printing activities can be held regularly, to enrich the tourist experience. Targeting local tourists, a series of hands-on block printing lessons can be developed, where the craftsmanship can be deconstructed into steps to facilitate learning. Tourists may make reservations to participate in these lessons through the museum’s website. This activity could enhance the tourist experience, enable them to gain educational benefits, and increase the number of museum visitors. For visitors from outside of Yangzhou, the museum can simplify the block printing craftsmanship to facilitate on-site learning and practice in a short period of time, which would enable these visitors to create personalized block prints as their own exclusive souvenir of the trip. This activity would offer visitors intense, positive experiences – a sense of accomplishment. Moreover, the exclusive souvenirs would enable visitors to establish a personal emotional connection with the museum and extend the travel experience after the end of the tour, both of which would increase the revisit rate.

5.2 Improve ungazed spaces to enhance leisure benefits

The tourism experience is composed of a supportive experience and a peak experience. The two dimensions complement each other and are mutually transformable [31]. In museum tourism, a peak experience is developed by viewing objects of appreciation (e.g. exhibits) and is mainly education-based. A supportive experience is developed from reception facilities and services (i.e. settings which are not objects of appreciation) and is mainly leisure-based. The China Block Printing Museum at Yangzhou can improve tourist leisure benefits by taking the following two measures. First, it can improve current reception facilities which tourists often complain about, such as through regular maintenance of air conditioners and toilets. The museum can also provide tourists with convenience services including free storage lockers, a device charging service, wheelchairs, and umbrellas. Second, it can rigorously configure children’s play areas, dining and recreation areas, souvenir shops, and performance venues; Henri Lefebvre identified the spatiality in objects as well as the continuous growth in spaces. The dual relationship between objects and space creates new spaces for self-reproduction [32]. The production of leisure space and the development of leisure activities are symbiotic, which guarantees visitors leisure benefits. In addition, ungazed spaces are required for museums to optimize their income revenue.

5.3 Innovate the museum guide system for educational benefits

The museum guide system is of great significance to the realization of museum tourism benefits. Museums usually use object labels to introduce their exhibits and place different introduction labels depending on the target audience. Based on the introduction labels, free brochures, audio and video guides, smart guides, and other forms of introduction can be developed to provide additional information to visitors with prior knowledge, help those without prior knowledge to understand the content of the exhibition, and arouse the interest of children to visit the museum. The gallery introductions in the audio guide system should be updated regularly according to the progress of research and to tourist needs. Professional terms should be used sparingly to facilitate comprehension. Museum docents should be trained on a regular basis to develop personalized narrations suitable for different target audiences and exhibits. Only when visitors comprehend an exhibition can they gain knowledge and cultural identity, thereby resulting a win-win outcome concerning the individual and social benefits of tourism. Moreover, the museum’s role of protecting intangible cultural heritage and inheritance can be realized.

5.4 Develop setting expansion to create unique all-for-one tourism products

In addition, the museum should improve setting expansion based on the collection and research of cultural relics, thereby increasing the amount of information and expressiveness of its settings, providing guidance to tourists, and satisfying their exploratory activity needs at the museum. The ‘all-for-one’ tourism concept can serve as a basis for the museum to strengthen cooperation with relevant scenic areas, thereby creating unique all-for-one tourism products. For example, the museum can collaborate with Guangling Publishing House and travel agencies to develop printing- and publishing-themed urban itineraries which involve visiting former public, commercial, and private block printing studios (e.g. the Yangzhou Poetry Office of Tianning Temple and Jienan Bookstore) to meet tourist needs for in-depth exploration of Yangzhou’s block printing history and culture. The Block Printing Museum at Yangzhou, located in New Western District, is distant from other popular attractions (e.g. Slender West Lake, Dongguan Street, and Geyuan Garden) and is thus often neglected by tourists when planning itineraries. The development of all-for-one tourism products would be conducive to addressing this problem.

6.1 Three types of tourist activity-setting needs

An analysis of tourist activity-environment needs indicates that tourist activities interacted closely with the museum settings, and these needs can be roughly divided into three types. The first need, ‘visit-basic setting’, involves fundamental settings such as exhibition display and receptions to provide tourists with leisure and knowledge-seeking activities which were of upmost significance to them. The second need, ‘participation-dynamic setting’, refers to dynamic settings for participatory activities, which though of less significance to tourists have developmental potential. The third need, ‘exploration-setting expansion’, involves deeply and extensively relevant settings to offer exploratory activities which were least significant to tourists.

6.2 Improvement required for tourism activity-related experience

Our analysis of tourist activity-experience needs suggests that the effects of museum tourism activities on the tourist experience require improvement. Specifically, the experience of activities was of secondary significance to tourists and did not leave a strong impression on them. These phenomena remind the museum that participatory activity development requires urgent improvement.

6.3 Tourism setting-related experience was overall positive

The analysis of tourist setting-experience needs signifies that tourist perception of the museum setting was closely related to their experience, and the overall experience was positive. The museum’s basic display and reception settings were the most crucial experience to tourists. The basic setting of the museum provided visitors with an intense and mainly positive experience. Individual negative experiences reflect a deficiency in some reception facilities. Second, the extensive museum settings delivered positive, intense experience to tourists, but the experience was of secondary significance and required further development. Finally, the museum’s dynamic settings provided tourists with a positive but not intense experience of marginal status. This conclusion concurs with the aforementioned activity-experience research conclusion and reveals flaws in the design of the museum’s dynamic settings.

6.4 Tourism experience-related benefits were unfavourable

The results of the experience-benefit relationship analysis indicate that the benefits of the tourism experience were unfavourable. Specifically, the correlation between tourism experience and tourism benefits was low; the tourism experience delivered only educational benefits, not leisure benefits, and the educational benefits generated by the tourism experience exhibited marginal distribution.