User-generated content-driven smart tourism: system review and future prospects

With the rapid rise of digital tourism, user-generated content (UGC)-driven smart tourism research has attracted heated discussions among researchers. However, most of the existing studies focus on a single aspect such as big data or artificial intelligence, less on the application of a wide range of digital technologies in smart tourism, and lack a multidimensional in-depth analysis from the perspective of system development. For this reason, this study examines relevant literature within the field of UGC and smart tourism, and proposes a multi-dimensional analytical framework for UGC-driven smart tourism research based on systems theory. It uses bibliometric methods to extract the hotspots and centers of gravity of UGC-driven smart tourism research. Moreover, following the information systems life cycle theory of information system development, four research topics have been systematically identified. Finally, an overall view of future development of UGC-driven smart tourism is proposed at three major levels: micro, meso, and macro. This study attempts to theoretically enrich and improve the research framework of UGC-driven smart tourism as well as provide scientific decision support for researchers, practitioners and stakeholders to understand the development of research in this field.