The cultivation effect of architectural heritage YouTube videos on perceived destination image

Abstract

A positive and robust destination image endows a competitive advantage. As architecture appeals to tourists, it may be helpful to improve people’s perceptions of a place’s image. Social media cultivates the destination image. This study focused on the interrelationship of architectural heritage and destination image and aimed to investigate the potential of architectural heritage YouTube videos in communicating and cultivating the destination image of Beijing. It collected and analysed 2237 YouTube videos in French and 25,234 comments related to Beijing’s architectural heritage in tourism. The social networks analysis found that viewers lacked interaction. The sentiment analysis via artificial intelligence findings demonstrate that most video descriptions (94%) and viewers’ comments (91%) had a neutral or complimentary attitude on the buildings’ heritage in Beijing. The keyword in context (KWIC) results found that when people viewed Beijing’s architectural heritage tourism relevant videos and were fascinated by the content, they associated it with China rather than the city where the architectural heritage was located. This indicates a cultivation effect on the destination country image of China. The significance of this study is to provide suggestions to improve a country’s destination image with YouTube via architectural heritage. It also raises the importance and social awareness of architectural heritage conservation and provides insights for policymakers on destination country image building.