An Eye-Tracking Study of Geological and Physiognomic Process
Trace Tourism Resources: Gender and Age
Fu Gang and Fan Zeyu
School of Economic and Management, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China
Keywords: Eye-tracking, Tourism Resources, Age, Gender.
Abstract: As tourism market becoming increasingly competitive, finding the right segment market and attract target
audience’s attention is critical. This study used the eye-tracking technology which included several eye
movement indexes. Different age and gender participants were recruited to view 15 photographic images
that depicted geological and physiognomic process trace tourism resources. As main result, male
participants show more interests in this kind of tourism resource than female, youth participants show more
interests than teenagers and middle-aged people. This study fills the void in the attraction research of
geological and physiognomic process trace tourism resources and presents a novel approach to find the
potential tourists to specific tourism resources.
1 INTRODUCTION
Tourism resource is the basis of the development of
the tourism industry and there are large amount
kinds of tourism resources in China. The academics
always try to explore new ways to develop and
marketing them more scientifically.
The eye-tracking technology plays an significant
role in the study of psychology (Nielsen, 2011).
Academics began to apply this approach to tourism
industry recent years, make a big contribution to the
study of the target market. A recent research found
that Chinese show more interest than Australian
when viewing the natural environment images, the
author put the tourism images into a quadrant model
(natural environment, build environment, low
arousal and high arousal), it turned out that
Australian have more fixation counts and fixation
time than Chinese (Wang, 2014). Other research is
about tourists exploring a city panorama, which is a
empirical outdoor eye tracking study without a time
limit, this research tell us that the number of areas of
interest revisited was found to be a good predictor
for the total exploration duration (Kiefer, 2014).
Two subject groups (Chinese and Australian) had a
photographic stimuli using the eye-tracking
technology, the result showed clearly that there are
significant difference between the two ethnics (Chua,
2005). The difference between ethnicity attracts
another research, the Chinese prefer to natural
environment or somewhere with water, while
Canadian like exotic adventure more (Dewar, 2007).
Chinese shows more interest in passive activity,
something like sightseeing or walk on the beach; but
the western prefer to activities with adventure, such
as riding and hunting (Han, 2006; Mohsin, 2008; Xu,
2009). Other eye movement study focus on the
landscape. The afforest landscape of the city have
different eye movement characters (Zhang, 2009).
The eye movement apparatus recorded the data
when participants viewing one of the buildings of
Nanjing University, finally we know the mechanics
of mental activities of the people (Li, 2011). In one
study of Danxia Landform, eye-tracking data were
compared to the data obtained from the same
participants with questionnaires, the results showed
that we can use this eye-tracking technology to
measure the quality of some specific landscape and
it is much more accurate than the traditional
approaches (Wang, 2011).
In this paper, we investigate the following
research question: what difference can we find
between the ages and genders when participants
viewing the geological and physiognomic process
trace tourism resources. We describe an eye-tracking
study of 60 participants (different age and gender)
viewing 15 types of the tourism resources without a
time limit (section 2). Based on the 48 participants
we analyzed so far, our data indicate that male
54
54
Zeyu F. and Gang F.
An Eye-Tracking Study of Geological and Physiognomic Process Trace Tourism Resources - Gender and Age.
DOI: 10.5220/0006019000540058
In Proceedings of the Information Science and Management Engineering III (ISME 2015), pages 54-58
ISBN: 978-989-758-163-2
Copyright
c
 2015 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

participants show more interests in this kind of
tourism resource than female, youth participants
show more interests than teenagers and middle-aged
people. The results are discussed in section 3 and we
conclude our work in section 4.
2 METHOD
This research using eye-tracking technology to
measure tourism attraction of 15 basic types of
geological and physiognomic process trace tourism
resources (Protruding Mountain, Single Mountain,
Clustered Mountain, Stone Forest, Soil Forest,
Fancy and Shapely Rock, Rock Fill Cave, Ravine,
Dune Field, Cliff and Crack, Rocky Cavity and
Grotto, Gorge Segment, Danxia Landform, Yardang
and Shore). All the 15 images were chosen from the
official website of the Chinese National Geography,
which is the most authoritative source in China.
2.1 Participants
Sixty people participated in the study. Twenty were
teenagers which from a educational counseling
agency in Qinhuangdao, (10 males and 10 females),
twenty youth (10 males and 10 females) and twenty
middle-aged (10 males and 10 females) participants
were graduate students and teachers from Yanshan
university in China. All the participants had normal
(or corrected to normal) vision and had never seen
these images before.
2.2 Apparatus
An SMI RED Eye Tracker from Germany,
integrated into a 19-inch monitor,was used for the
eye-movement task. The working procedure is to use
the infrared camera to get the subject's eye image.
The SMI Eye Tracker contains three software: the
experiment center set the display length and order of
the image; the iView X record the fixation time and
position of the subjects; the BeGaze can analysis the
data and also has several functions such as focus
map and heat map. The SMI is considered accurate
and has a tracking resolution of 0.1deg.
2.3 Procedure
Before engaging in the eye-tracking task,
participants were informed they would be viewing
15 images about geological and physiognomic
process trace tourism resources by the instruction.
The images were presented randomly to reduce any
order effects of images. The display duration time of
each image was controlled by the subject itself using
a space key. Adjust the seat to the right place and let
the subjects sat in front of the screen at 60 cm. Start
the experiment task when the correcting meet the
standard (X,Y<1). The experiment lasts at most 5
minutes and each participant got a gift when they
left.
2.4 Data Analysis Approach
We analyzed the eye-movement data for images on
the basis of 7 indexes: Fixation Number, Fixation
Average Time, Fixation Frequency, Saccade
Frequency, First Fixation During Time of AOI (area
of interest), Regression Count of AOI，Proportion
of AOI Fixation Time. All of the indexes can reflect
the attraction of the tourism resource images to the
participants positively or negatively. Due to some
unavoidable reasons such as tired or astigmatism of
the eyes, we collected 48 participants’ eye-
movement data. Divided into 2 or 3 big groups and 6
small groups on average according to the age and
gender, each small group has 8 people.
Firstly, we put the 7 indexes together and use the
Entropy method to get the comprehensive value of
each group and then we know the attraction of every
picture. Secondly, we use the ANOVA to find if
there is a significant differences between the groups.
3 RESULTS
Analysis began with eye-tracking measures of
attention, including 7 index. Thanks to the Entropy
method we can know how much of each group like
the image. For each dependent variable we
conducted a 15 (type) ×3 (age) ×2 (gender) mixed-
design analysis of variance (ANOVA), with the type
of picture being within subjects, age and gender
between subjects.
3.1 Attraction from the Entropy
Different gender subjects have different eye
movement characteristics when they watching the
geological and physiognomic process trace tourism
resources, different age is also the same. That means
each of the images have a different attraction to the
different groups. We can see from table 1 and table 2,
for most of the type of geological and physiognomic
process trace tourism resources, male participants
show more interests than female, youth participants
An Eye-Tracking Study of Geological and Physiognomic Process Trace Tourism Resources: Gender and Age
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An Eye-Tracking Study of Geological and Physiognomic Process Trace Tourism Resources - Gender and Age
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Table 1: The comprehensive entropy of gender to the tourism attraction.
Type of Tourism
Resources
Male Female Type Male Female
Protruding
Mountain
0.232 0.231 Dune Field 0.226 0.230
Single Mountain 0.245 0.234 Cliff and Crack 0.218 0.226
Clustered
Mountain
0.258 0.248
rocky Cavity and
Grotto
0.246 0.234
Stone Forest 0.267 0.244 Gorge Segment 0.240 0.250
Soil Forest 0.266 0.232
Danxia
Landform
0.258 0.225
Fancy and Shapely
Rock
0.240 0.231 Yardang 0.241 0.251
Rock Fill Cave 0.248 0.249 Shore 0.271 0.225
Ravine 0.232 0.221
Table 2: The comprehensive entropy of age to the tourism attraction.
Type of Tourism
Resources
Teenager Youth
Middle-
aged
Type Teenager Youth
Middle-
aged
Protruding
Mountain
0.201 0.252 0.242 Dune Field 0.185 0.257 0.241
Single Mountain 0.199 0.266 0.254 Cliff and Crack 0.175 0.270 0.222
Clustered
Mountain
0.198 0.315 0.248
Rocky cavity
and grotto
0.197 0.284 0.238
Stone Forest 0.192 0.309 0.267 Gorge Segment 0.205 0.306 0.224
Soil Forest 0.205 0.289 0.253
Danxia
Landform
0.222 0.285 0.216
Fancy and
Shapely Rock
0.212 0.257 0.239 Yardang 0.205 0.283 0.249
Rock Fill Cave 0.213 0.280 0.252 Shore 0.208 0.287 0.249
Ravine 0.185 0.270 0.224
show more interests than teenagers and middle-aged
people.
3.2 Analysis of Variance
We use the ANOVA to find if the difference from
different age and gender to the 15 images is
significant.
3.2.1 Gender
The significant test of 15 types of geological and
physiognomic process trace tourism resources are as
the followings: only the Shore (F=4.306,
Sig.=0.049<0.05) have a significant difference
between male and female, the other 14 types have no
significant difference. We can see the details from
table 3.
3.2.2 Age
The significant test of 15 types of geological and
physiognomic process trace tourism resources are as
the followings: Clustered mountain, Stone Forest,
Ravine, Dune Field, Cliff and Crack, Rocky Cavity
and Grotto, Gorge Segment, Danxia Landform and
Shore have a significant difference to the tourism
atraction between ages, the other 6 types have no
significant difference. We can see the details from
table 4.
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Table 3: Main effect test of gender.
Type of Tourism
Resources
F Sig. Type F Sig.
Protruding
Mountain
0.003 0.960 Dune Field 0.036 0.851
Single Mountain 0.218 0.645 Cliff and Crack 0.341 0.565
Clustered Mountain 0.176 0.679
Rocky Cavity and
Grotto
0.211 0.650
Stone Forest 0.517 0.479 Gorge Segment 0.125 0.727
Soil Forest 1.572 0.223 Danxia Landform 2.171 0.154
Fancy and Shapely
Rock
0.321 0.577 Yardang 0.3663 0.551
Rock Fill Cave 0.001 0.976 Shore 4.306 0.049
Ravine 0.295 0.592
Table 4: Main effect test of age.
Type of Tourism
Resources
F Sig. Type F Sig.
Protruding Mountain 1.500 0.239 Dune Field 3.76 0.035
Single Mountain 3.153 0.057 Cliff and Crack 6.861 0.004
Clustered Mountain 5.891 0.007
Rocky Cavity
and Grotto
3.953 0.030
Stone Forest 5.129 0.012 Gorge Segment 4.958 0.014
Soil Forest 2.247 0.123
Danxia
Landform
4.061 0.027
Fancy and Shapely
Rock
3.153 0.057 Yardang 3.195 0.055
Rock Fill Cave 2.639 0.088 Shore 5.163 0.012
Ravine 4.626 0.018
4 CONCLUSIONS
The study yielded three main findings and
contributions. First, we present a novel approach to
measure and calculate the attraction of the tourism
resources. In this study, we focus on the geological
and physiognomic process trace tourism resources
and in the future research we can focus on other type
of tourism resources, such as water area landscape
and biology landscape. This new approach make a
significant contribution to the government and some
tourism enterprise when make some tourism policies
or do some tourism development. Secondly, we use
age and gender two population variable of the
tourism market and know their different preference
to each images. Following up to this study, take
some other factors into account, such as income and
occupation, so that we can make the tourism
segment market more accurate to the specific type of
tourism resources, have more pertinence when
designing the landscape, making the enterprise
more competitive. Finally, for this empirical
research, we know that male has more interest in
geological and physiognomic process trace tourism
resources, but almost have no significant differences
between them, youth show more interests than
teenagers and middle-aged people and have a
significant differences for 9 type of the tourism
resources.
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