The conceptualization of smart tourism service platforms on tourist value co-creation behaviours: an integrative perspective of smart tourism services

The question remains how to integrate the core service proposals within a smart tourism platform setting for further facilitating tourist value co-creation behaviours in sustainable ways. This paper investigates the paradigm of smart tourism service (STS) platforms within the context of an ecosystem space. It conceptualizes concepts by laying a reasonable theoretical foundation (service-dominant logic) and proposing a scale for smart services. Applying sequential mixed methods to an exploratory research design, with seven interlocking stages and data from Fuzzy Delphi experts and tourist surveys in Taipei City, a smart city in Taiwan, this paper proposes a second-order scale with six dimensions, comprising smart services of attractions, transportation, accommodation, diet, purchase, and payment. The final 32-item STS scale is thoroughly developed and subsequently validated in different contexts (i.e. travellers in different phases of travel, pre-travel and during the trip, respectively). The scale significantly reveals the tourist-operated technologies for the provision of STS, determining the development of conceptual STS platforms in this paper. Next, the platforms disclose the locus between ICT functions, information-related services, tourist applications and behaviours, and sustainable value co-creation. The potential path of “STS → behaviour → sustainable value co-creation” explored herein is helpful for illustrating the conceptualization of STS platforms. Moreover, predictions from the platforms of tourists’ smart behaviours make it practically relevant in assessing demands about smart services for tourism. In the end, this paper describes the theoretical implications and managerial implications for tourism practitioners.