Preliminary questionnaire-based study on using behaviour change to increase tourism to Toyama

Progress of information technology has enabled people to have more opportunities to diversify their interests and also led to an increase of tourists to various new locations. In this research, we study the possibility of using Persuasive Technology to increase the number of tourists with a focus on Toyama prefecture. We conducted a preliminary questionnaire for Japanese tourists, to explore their barriers for those who visit or would like to visit the area, the advantages of the location, and studied the possibilities of using behaviour change techniques derived from our initial analysis. Our focus was on Toyama prefecture, but we can extrapolate some suggestions to other regions as well. The analysis suggested that Toyama should appeal more to its often unknown attractive offerings, like hot springs and its unique features, while giving this information contextualized to users and routing the visitors to the destination based on the their home location. We also discuss with examples, the implications of using the persuasive system design (PSD) model, which has several system qualities we can take advantage of, such as primary task and dialogue support to create more persuasive features. Lastly, we present the limitations in our study.