Towards a typology of virtual tourists: Efficacy of visual patterns and attentional cues
基于眼动追踪轨迹和访谈数据，依据视觉完整性和认知加工方式，将虚拟游客分为视觉被动型、好奇扫描型、专注观察型和全面参与型四类，为旅游市场细分提供新方法。
Virtual tourism is rapidly emerging in prominence in contemporary tourism research. Previous studies tend to consider the virtual tourism population as a homogeneous entity, resulting in unintended consequences . Despite the ocular-centric nature within virtual environments, existing eye tracking studies have rarely classified virtual tourists into benefit-based segments, discounting the critical role of pre-existing visual patterns and associated attentional cues. Subsequently, this research constructs a theoretically rigorous and evidence-informed typology of virtual tourists, based on attention patterns discerned from eye tracking trajectory and associated visual cues, triangulated with interview data. Building on the theory of bottom-up and top-down attentional processing, four discrete virtual tourist typologies emerged in terms of visual completeness and visual cognition: visual passives , curious scanners , focused observers , and comprehensive engagers . The visual and cognitive characteristics among the groups were collated, revealing significant differences articulated between each of the virtual tourist typologies. This research not only advances knowledge through a renewed emphasis on typology-driven theorising within the virtual tourism population, but also offers practical insights into implementing an innovative and effective segmentation approach . Future research should consider comparing the theoretical and empirical specifications of the virtual tourist typology.