Virtual Environment for Participatory Simulation in Tourism
Dingding Chao 1, Taro Kanno 1, and Kazuo Furuta 11

1

Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Introduction

Theories and techniques for information systems in tourism
have been well developed in recent years. These information
systems assist tour planning for tourists and improve tourism
services. However, contrary to the increasing interests inadvancing technological applications, thorough research fromthe perspective of tourists is lacking. Previous studies in tourism
from the social perspective commonly utilize questionnaires tocollect data for analyzing tourist behavior. However, as tourism
studies become more and more inter-disciplined, and as touring
activities become more complex, mere questionnaires may not
be able to cover every aspect of tourist behavior. New
approaches that combine the merits of research fromengineering and social perspectives are needed. This paper
intends to explore the potential of a virtual environment to serve
as a platform for undertaking participatory simulation in tourism
and understanding tourist behavior.
2Participatory Simulation

Participatory simulation is not a recent invention, but has
gained significant focus in recent years as a strategy to further
improve the reliability of agent-based simulation. It enhances
the sensibility and validity of the decision-making logic of“agents,” who are actually human participants. By combining
experiments involving real people and simulated environments
and scenarios, researchers are able to explore behavior patterns
in the real world and examine the theories beyond the artificial
settings.
3

2.1
Participatory Simulation for Tourism
Studies

Few researches in tourism utilize participatory simulation asa methodology to stimulate interaction and enhance the physicaland emotional involvement of the experiment/survey
participants to have a better understanding of tourist behavior
and decision-making process. The present study proposes a new
approach for studying and discovering tourist behavior patterns
through virtual environments and computer simulation to create
artificial, but similar to the real world, tourism space forcollecting and recording data, as well as exploring the entire
tourist experience.

4Open Simulator and Virtual Environment

4.1

OpenSimulator
OpenSimulator is an open source platform that can support
Second Life-like 3D applications. Multiple users can create,customize, and access virtual environments in OpenSimulator.
The OpenSimulator has the following features that ensure theplatform’s capacity to develop virtual environments forparticipatory simulation.
i.
ii.

Capability to create multi-user 3D online environment
Support for real-time physics and interactive userexperience

iii.

An open-source that allows researchers to develop andextend their own virtual world based on the needs oftourism studies

Although OpenSimulator shares many similar features withSecond Life, it is not a clone of Second Life's server, nor does itever intend to be. OpenSimulator is suitable for academic
research purposes because iti.

can run locally,ii.

is cleaner for research use,iii.

is easy to modify and extend,iv.

saves on cost, andv.

lacks support for many of the game-specific features

Existing studies have successfully applied OpenSimulator todevelopment of simulation platforms for studies in education.
However, most of these studies are outside the area of tourism.
We believe that the OpenSimulator can become a powerful toolto break through the bottlenecks of existing tourism research.
4.2

Application in Tourism Studies
One of the limitations in current tourism studies is the lackof awareness regarding the dynamic and irrational processinherent in tourist decision-making. Statistical data gatheredfrom questionnaires before, after, or even without the actual trip
are often used to analyze tourist behavior. However,determining the preferences of tourists/participants is difficult if
they are not involved in the touring experience. A participatory
simulation with experiment conducted in a virtual environment
can conquer this problem, as such simulation creates the entire
tourist experience and records the process when participants
take their tours in it.
The virtual experiment in OpenSimulator (some contentsfrom other users/developers of OpenSimulator under creative
commons license are used) is developed to test the effect of thesequence of visiting attractions on tourists’ satisfaction with
their travelling experience. In relation to this, two different
virtual worlds were developed to examine the effect of both thedestination level and the attraction level.

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Fig. 1. Examples of simulation scene
For the destination level, the virtual environment consists offour “regions” in the OpenSimulator:
i. Mountain area
ii. Sunshine beachiii. Another mountain area
iv. Modern city
For the attraction level, the virtual environment consists of
only one “region,” but with the following tourism attractions:i. Gardenii. Galleryiii. Seaside
iv. Spa
v. Mountain
By inviting common participants and “travel experts” to join
the participatory simulation and rate their touring experience ineach destination or attraction during their trip, we can test ourtheories on the sequence-of-visit effect and examine the validityof the methodology of applying a virtual environment toparticipatory simulation for tourism studies.

5Conclusion

The paper explores the potential of a virtual environment
and its application in participatory simulation for tourism studies.
Platforms such as OpenSimulator should be further utilized indeveloping participatory simulation to deepen the understandingof the decision-making process of participants.

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Some contents used for developing virtual worlds are from
Lindakellie: http://www.lindakellie.com
OpenSimulatorulator: http://OpenSimulatorulator.org