Characteristics of the Tourism-Related Perception Propagation

The propagating of a tourism-related perception is closely associated with the destination image and has a great influence in purchase decision of potential tourists. Here, the chracteristics of the propagation were investigated by numerically simulating with a small-world network and an epidemic model. Results indicated that the number of both the message senders and the message receivers synchronously increase at the beginning and then decrease. The message will spread among a great portion of the population if the propagation is not controlled. We defined the least propagation times as the least times that is needed to propagate the message to the whole population. The relationship between the least propagation times and the population size was modeled. The model suggested that the message will be spread to all people only in a month in a one million-people city. Also, a high connection of the network will speed the propagation. Our studies revealed some details of the perception propagation.