Merging vSa and SS. An ABSA for Smart Tourism Ecosystem

Purpose –The territorial complexity and the large quantities of data generated by users makes central the innovative governance models (Troisi et al., 2016, 2017), more geared towards the value co-creation process among the various social actors and technology platforms (Lusch and Vargo, 2006). In this regard, this work, adopting an ecosystem perspective, aims to offer a decision-making model for the smart tourism ecosystem (STE), able to provide a representation of the variety of expectations, perspectives and interests of the actors, allowing for greater awareness of the interventions that could be aimed at solving urban problems.Methodology–The work is developed by merging the Viable Systems Approach, the Service Science frameworks and the Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis methodology, offering a possible framework able to integrate successfully service and systems theories. To extract, analyse and elaborate data, in particular, we used the ABSA, inorder to carry out an advanced sentiment analysis in the tourist context. Findings –The study leads to an exposition of shared evaluations on the levels of “sentiment” as perceived by the actors of different level in relation to a tourism point of interest. The result is a model of government comparable to a service ecosystem in which people, technology and institutions are appropriately combined to generate value (Schaffers et al., 2011).Research implications–The Viable Systems Approach combined with ABSA offers interesting implication regarding the processes of value co-creation (Barile and Polese, 2010). The vSa, in fact, recognizing the complexity of social phenomena, in general, and of the territorial decision-making processes, specifically, pushes to evaluate numerous information, without losing a systems perspective, in order to co-create value through an increasingly dynamic interaction with ecosystem actors (Barile et al., 2012). Practical implications–The work offers interesting insights for improving the results pursued in different areas of administrative life. In fact, value co-creation processes underline that an adequate combination of activities carried out by managers, citizens-users, technology and other players in social life leads to improved performance. The model can be a valid support for the decision maker, proposing, in a flexible way, shared evaluations on the levels of "sentiment" perceived by the community with respect to the touristic area of interest. Originality–The innovative nature of the work arises from the authors’ choice to analyze the decision making processes in terms of co-created value through the interpretative lens of vSa, enabling to achieve results steeped in value for scholars and practitioners interested in both business management and technology engineering in the tourist destinations context.