Exploring thematic influences on theme park visitors' satisfaction: An empirical study on Disneyland China

This study aims to explore thematic influences on theme park visitors' satisfaction through user-generated data. To this end, we first used an unsupervised machine learning method, structural topic modeling, and analyzed 112,000 reviews post by visitors to Shanghai Disney Resort from June 16, 2016 to March 4, 2022. Our findings are of great significance for reflecting consumer behavior through user-generated data. Specifically, we find that visitors' satisfaction is highly related to service in the theme park and their playing feeling, and early tourists pay more attention to the experience of specific playing items while later tourists focus on the overall playing experience. In addition, an empirical study is conducted by treating the ratings associated with each review as dependent variable and each topic represented by comments as independent variables, which shows that the relationship between the customer reviews and ratings by tourists becomes less pronounced over time. In other words, as time goes, customers review can reflect their subjective feelings or experience, but the rating is not. We discover the “dynamics” of user-generated data over time and gain a better understanding of the aspects and concerns of visitors' satisfaction over time. The findings of the study contribute to the literature on tourism, service, and consumer behavior while also providing valuable practical implications.