This project is funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), 2017-2020, Amount: $360,000

Chief Investigator: Dr. Jia Tina Du (ARC DECRA)

Research Team: UniSA members Mr. Mouda Ye (PhD student), Prof. Sam Huang, Prof. Marianna Sigala, Assoc. Prof. Helen Ashman,  external collaborators: Assoc. Prof. Preben Hansen (Stockholm University, Sweden) and Mr. Peter Reid (South Australian Tourism Commission)

Project outline: This project aims to better understand group behaviour of information seeking. The project builds models and develops guidelines for understanding and supporting collaborative information seeking behaviour in the context of tourism. It is expected to benefit the Australian tourism industry, making it easier for tourists to find information and improving tourists’ overall experience.

Project Progress:

Mar 2021: our new IPM publication “Understanding roles in collaborative information behaviour: a case of Chinese group travelling”. This article is being featured by IP&M. Free access to article provided by IP&M (Elsevier): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306457321000820

Jan – Jun 2020: Performed data analysis on the complete dataset.

Nov 2019: main study data collection is done.

Oct 2019:  Dr. Jia Tina Du presented the paper “Roles in collaborative information behaviour among group holidaymakers” at 2019 national RAILS Conferencein Canberra, Australia.

Oct 2019: PhD student Mouda Ye presented the paper “Active followers’: An emerging role of information behaviour among group holiday makers” at the 82nd International ASIST Conference in Melbourne, Australia.

Aug 2019:  继续招募研究参与者 data collection is still ongoing, we are recruiting research participants: 招募2019年通过网络寻找驴友，或者和家人朋友结伴赴澳洲自由行的年轻（18-40岁）中国游客团队 Participants recruitment: small groups of young Chinese tourists (18-40 yrs old) who travel on self-organised trips to Australia during 2019

July 2019:  Our paper “’Active followers’: An emerging role of information behaviour among group holiday makers” has been accepted and included in the Proceedings of the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST 2019). [ASIST is a leading international information science and technology conference; CORE A]

July 2019: Dr. Jia Tina Du presented the research-in-progress paper “Young Chinese tourists’ motivations to engage in collaborative information behaviour for group holidays” at the 23rd Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2019) in Xi’an, China.

June 2019: PhD student Mouda Ye presented “Group holidaymakers: how do you search?” at the School of ITMS 3-Minute Thesis Competition.

Apr 2019:  Our paper “Young Chinese tourists’ motivations to engage in collaborative information behaviour for group holidays” has been accepted and included in the Proceedings of the 23rd Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2019). [CORE A] Link to the paper

Dec 2018: PhD student Mouda Ye was awarded a SIGIR Student Travel Grant in the amount of $2,000.00 USD for attending 2019 ACM SIG CHIIR Conference.

Nov 2018:  Our paper “Collaborative information seeking in tourism: a study of young Chinese leisure tourists visiting Australia” has been accepted and included in the Proceedings of the ACM SIG CHIIR Conference. Link to the paper

Nov 2018:  Our paper “Examining tourists’ engagement in information seeking and collaboration” was accepted and presented at 2018 national RAILS Conference

Jun-Sep 2018: A pilot study was conducted with 7 real groups of Chinese tourists to Australia.

June 2018: PhD student Jannatul Fardous and Dr. Jia Tina Du gave a talk on Tourists’ social media usage during group trip planning at 2018 IFITT Workshop on Smart Tourism, see the Press Release published in TravelDailyNews  here

June 2018: we kick off data collection

Feb 2018: PhD student Mouda Ye completed his research proposal which is part of the funded project and his candidature is confirmed.

November 2017: Dr. Jia Tina Du gave a talk entitled “The Role of Information in Smart Tourism: A Tourist-focused Perspective” at 2017  IFITT Workshop on Smart Tourism, press release here

January-March 2017: Recruitment of a PhD student (PhD advertisement)