Measuring tourist satisfaction and dissatisfaction: adaptation of the 4Q methodology to the case of web based data

Abstract

Tourist satisfaction has been studied so far using many different theoretical approaches and measurement models. In doing that, scholars have considered satisfaction and dissatisfaction either as two extremes on a single continuum or two distinct conceptual dimensions, i.e. tourist satisfaction (TS) and tourist dissatisfaction (TD) (Alegre and Garau, 2010). In line with the latter approach, known as dual approach, the 4Q is a methodology which permits to measure TS and TD through the administration of just four open-ended questions to tourists (Oliveri et al., 2018). The main feature of the 4Q methodology is that data regarding dozens of TS and TD elementary indicators can be drawn from the answers provided by tourists to the four questions. Afterwards, composite indicators of both TS and TD can be constructed. This work aims to propose some adaptations of the 4Q methodology to the analysis of TS and TD as emerged from spontaneous online travel reviews, and to show how to obtain TS and TD composite indicators which are able to meet the recommendations issued by OECD-JRS (2008).