A study of the structure of China's mainstream online tourism information network based on SNA

Abstract

Taking China's mainstream tourism websites as research objects, the paper introduced Social Network Analysis into studying tourism information network in order to construct the network structure of tourism information websites based on the friendly links among websites. Social Network Analysis method was used to analyze the structure of mainstream tourism information network in China. The study confirms that: firstly, China's online tourism information network is a typical complex network with scale-free. The density of the network is 0.0584, which indicates that the overall network structure is relatively loose; secondly, a few websites play key roles in the tourism information and resources flow and occupy central position in the whole network; thirdly, there is close connection within a group, while the connection between groups is weak. In addition, this paper analyzed the relationship between the characteristics of online tourism information network and the space distribution of tourism websites. The research results provide some theoretical basis for establishing a more reasonable tourism information network structure in China. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.