The College of Tourism and Service Management of Nankai University has always inherited and carried forward the spirit of "studying for the prosperity and development of China", committed to solving important issues faced by the tourism economy and society, pursuing the core propositions of new era development, and implementing the important mission of educating through rooted tourism practice. Led by Associate Professor Liang Sai, a selected member of the "One Hundred Young Disciplinary Leaders Program of Nankai University," the research team is dedicated to promoting scientific research on shared tourism and new industrial governance in the context of the new era of tourism.

Dr. Liang Sai graduated from the Harbin Institute of Technology, where he studied under a renowned scholar in the fields of information management systems and tourism management, Professor Ye Qiang. Currently, he serves as an associate professor, doctoral supervisor, and deputy director of the Tourism Department at the College of Tourism and Service Management. He was selected for the Tianjin "131" innovative talent training program and the Nankai University One Hundred Young Academic Leaders Program. He also serves as a director of the Management and Decision Science Committee of the China Association for Modern Management, the E-commerce and Cyber Space Management Committee of the China Association for Modern Management, and the Tourism Big Data Branch of the China Field Statistics Society. Dr. Liang has led one national natural science fund program and several provincial-level projects and has been a core member of nearly ten programs funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Social Science Foundation of China, and the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education. Associate Professor Liang Sai has published more than 30 high-quality research achievements in top journals of tourism disciplines and related disciplines over the past five years, including Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Business Research, and Nankai Business Review. Additionally, several of his papers have been selected for the ESI Highly Cited Papers list. Furthermore, Dr. Liang has guided his students to win the Nankai University Excellent Award in the National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program based on shared tourism and the digital economy in 2021. His paper, "Hidden emotions: A study of tourists' different emotional dimensions and influencing factors behind online ratings," won the Excellent Paper Award at the 2020 China Tourism Research Conference, a top conference in the field of tourism management in China.

Dr. Liang Sai has led a team that focuses on three specific research directions: the shared tourism market user behavior, digital platform governance, big data analysis and intelligent decision-making. They are committed to deconstructing the behavior patterns and interaction models of multiple stakeholders in the context of shared tourism, constructing the content framework and governance system of shared tourism digital platforms, and optimizing shared tourism intelligent decision-making methods, processes, and systems. Specific research work includes:

1. Research on user behavior in the shared tourism market.

Shared tourism differs from traditional business models due to its characteristics such as non-standardized services, low barriers to entry, strong interactivity, and bidirectional commenting and reputation mechanisms. This has led to significant differences in behavior patterns and interaction modes among multiple stakeholders compared to traditional markets, prompting a series of reflections and questions in the context of shared tourism. Therefore, the team has revealed the behavior patterns of multiple stakeholders and the underlying logic from the multidimensional perspectives of hosts, guests, and their interactions. From the perspective of hosts, the process and results of online and offline interactions with guests will directly drive their behavior. For example, a high-quality interaction experience with guests will enhance the host's willingness to disclose information. However, potential "conflicts" and "friction" that arise in the interaction with guests may also lead hosts to adopt a "tit-for-tat" feedback mode when replying to guest comments. From the perspective of guests, first, the high heterogeneity of products and services in the sharing accommodation market and the limited number of online reviews in the market make guests more dependent on host information disclosure in the decision-making process, but their requirements for the form and content of host information disclosure differ from those of consumers in other non-sharing tourism contexts. For example, guests prefer hosts to disclose more detailed self-description and restrictive information (such as "house rules") as well as higher-quality profile pictures. In addition, expressing more emotions during the information disclosure process can effectively increase the trust of guests and enhance their willingness to purchase. Secondly, in the shared accommodation market, compared to the professionalism and standardization of service processes of the hosts, guests tend to prefer hosts with personal charm who can provide them with a more authentic sense of interpersonal interaction when booking. On the one hand, this has led to "local bias" in which guests blindly book accommodations from local hosts, and on the other hand, it has also raised new requirements for the service content of hosts.

2. Research on the governance of digital platforms in shared tourism.

The characteristics of the shared accommodation industry, such as large numbers, dispersed locations, diverse types, low entry barriers, and significant safety risks, make it difficult to establish effective contracts for regulation and behavior governance in the shared accommodation market. Therefore, it is a critical and urgent issue for government agencies and the academic community to establish a trigger-based regulatory mechanism and improve the governance system of shared accommodation platforms. The team focuses on mainstream shared accommodation platforms and proposes innovative platform design models and governance strategies based on service providers, platforms, and governments at multiple levels. Firstly, the team early on demonstrated the mechanism of the gamification design scheme (Superhost badge) of the shared accommodation platform on the online behavior of tenants, providing theoretical support for hosts to improve their listing performance. Secondly, by exploring the operating mechanisms and effects of the "usefulness voting" design of two types of digital tourism platforms, the team provided optimization suggestions for platform design and governance strategies. In addition, by comparing the "management feedback" mechanism in shared tourism platforms (such as Xiaozhu and Airbnb) and other digital tourism platforms (such as Ctrip and TripAdvisor), the team injected new insights into improving the effectiveness of management feedback for service providers and platform managers in the shared tourism market. Finally, the team provided policy recommendations from the perspectives of optimizing news sentiment conflicts and improving the legal and regulatory system for the government's governance strategies towards small and medium-sized enterprises. The multidimensional management strategy response has promoted the research progress of shared tourism digital platform governance.

3. Research on big data analysis and intelligent decision-making in shared tourism.

Big data has penetrated various fields of intelligent decision-making in tourism and has a significant impact on tourism enterprise management and tourist behavior decision-making. The team conducted a series of studies based on the big data of the shared accommodation market platform, and through the construction of a multi-dimensional emotion method, empirically verified the correlation and influencing factors between online ratings and emotional dimensions. The study revealed that emotions in online reviews include three levels: pleasure, arousal, and dominance. Furthermore, the study found a positive correlation between online ratings and tourist pleasure, while there was a non-linear U-shaped relationship between online ratings and arousal/dominance. The research results help product and service providers to accurately grasp changes in consumer emotional states when improving products and services. Secondly, the team developed a computational framework for calculating multidimensional social factors (such as social information characteristics and social network factors) of tourists in the platform's social network and found that social factors have a direct promoting effect on users' information sharing behavior on the platform. For example, social information disclosure can effectively promote users' information-sharing behavior on the platform. When other users' contribution quality on the same product page is higher, users will have a stronger willingness to share comments due to social comparison, resulting in a "snowball effect". Compared to other unfamiliar users, users' information-sharing willingness is more significantly influenced by the contribution of users from the same hometown. In addition, the team also delved into the impact mechanisms of investor attention and consumer word-of-mouth on corporate asset restructuring performance from the perspectives of investors and consumers. The related research provides theoretical explanations for understanding the behavioral patterns of multiple subjects on shared accommodation platforms and has important theoretical significance for promoting the research progress of tourism big data and intelligent decision-making.

As one of the key universities that first establish a tourism management undergraduate program in China, Nankai University has always borne the important responsibility of developing the tourism discipline and pursuing the core proposition of new-era development. Relying on the topic of shared tourism, the university has responded to key disciplinary issues such as the rules governing multi-agent behavior in the context of shared tourism and how digital platforms can be governed. It is committed to promoting the theoretical construction of the sharing economy through a rich body of high-quality research, advancing the research process of shared tourism, and tracing and responding to the policy system promoted by the government to achieve high-quality development in shared tourism.

Here are some recent representative achievements:

[1] Sai Liang, 2022, "The Impact of Online Design on User Behavior of Home-Sharing Platforms", China Social Sciences Press

[2] Sai Liang, Hui Li, Xianwei Liu*, Markus Schuckert, 2019, “Motivators behind online information disclosure: Evidence from Airbnb hosts,” Annals of Tourism Research 76, 306-319.

[3] Sai Liang., Chunxiao Li., Xiaoxia Zhang., & Hui Li*. 2020. The snowball effect in online travel platforms: How does peer influence affect review posting decisions?. Annals of Tourism Research, 102876.

[4] Sai Liang, Markus Schuckert*, Rob Law, Chih-Chien Chen, 2017, “Be a “Superhost”: The importance of badge systems for peer-to-peer rental accommodations,” Tourism Management, 60, 454-465 (ESI highly cited and hot papers).

[5] Xi Zhang, Xiaoxia Zhang, Sai Liang*, Yang Yang, Rob Law, 2023, “Infusing new insights: How do review novelty and inconsistency shape the usefulness of online travel reviews?” Tourism Management 96, 104703.

[6] Lanfei Gao, Hui Li, Sai Liang*, Jingjing Yang, Rob Law, 2022, “How does constraining description affect guest booking decisions and satisfaction?” Tourism Management 93, 104607.

[7] Xi Zhang, Xin Wei, Te Zhang, Sai Liang*, Yao Ma, Rob Law, 2023, “Power of sentiment expressions on peer-to-peer rental platforms: A mixed‐method approach”, Journal of Travel Research, forthcoming.

[8] Jing Zheng, Sai Liang, Jing Ma*, Guoqiao Liu, Yirong Wu, 2022, “Can Tourism Enhance Chinese Subjective Well-Being?” Annals of Tourism Research 93,103372.

[9] Yafei Liu, Hui Li*, Sai Liang, 2022, “Any reputation is a good reputation: influence of investor-perceived reputation in restructuring on hospitality firm performance”. Annals of Tourism Research 92, 103327.

[10] Hui Li, Yafei Liu*, Sai Liang, Qing Zhou, 2020, “Tourism firm restructuring: Does the attention of individual investor matter?” Tourism Management, forthcoming.

[11] Sai Liang, Markus Schuckert*, Rob Law, Chih-Chien Chen, 2020, “The importance of marketer-generated content to peer-to-peer property rental platforms: Evidence from Airbnb.” International Journal of Hospitality Management. 84, 102329. ESI highly cited papers).

[12] Sai Liang, Markus Schuckert*, Rob Law, 2019, “How to improve the stated helpfulness of hotel reviews? A multilevel approach,” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 31(2), 953-977 (ESI highly cited papers, Emerald Highly Commended Papers Awards).

[13] Sai Liang, Qiang Ye, Xiaoxia Zhang, Rob Law, Caiyan Gong*, 2022, “Motivation behind review provision in online travel communities: Do hometowner contributions matter?” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 34(5), 1692-1716.

[14] Sai Liang, Xiaoxiao Zhang, Chunxiao Li, Hui Li*, Xiaoyu Yu, 2021. “Tit for tat: understanding the responding behavior of propgy hosts on peer-to-peer rental platforms”. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 33(3),1105-1126.

[15] Sai Liang, Jing Ma*, Yang Yang, Danmeng Wu, 2023, “Does tourism growth influence destination residents’ welfare in China? The mediating effect of cuisine diversity” Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, forthcoming.

[16] Qiang Ye, Sai Liang*, Zaiyan Wei, Rob Law, 2023, “Effects of reputation on guest satisfaction: From the perspective of two-sided reviews on Airbnb” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, forthcoming.

[17] Xiaoxia Zhang, Xi Zhang, Rob Law, Sai Liang*, 2021, “Identifying local bias on peer-to-peer rental platforms,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 99(3),103072.

[18] Xiaoshu Guo, Qiang Ye, Rob Law, Sai Liang*, 2022, “Power of apologetic responses in online travel community” International Journal of Hospitality Management 103, 103208.

[19] Zuolong Zheng, Ziying Li, Xuwen Zhang, Sai Liang*, Rob Law, Jiasu Lei, 2023, “Substitution or complementary effects between hosts and neighbors' information disclosure: Evidence from Airbnb” Journal of Business Research, forthcoming.

[20] Markus Schuckert, Sai Liang*, Rob Law, Wenjun Sun, 2019, “How do domestic and international high-end hotel brands receive and manage customer feedback?” International Journal of Hospitality Management 77, 528-537

[21] Xianwei Liu, Jianwei Liu, Rob Law, Sai Liang*, 2019, “Power of profile name in online sharing,” International Journal of Hospitality Management 81, 30-33

[22] Zili Zhang, Sai Liang, Hengyun Li, Ziqiong Zhang*, 2019, “Booking now or later: Do online peer reviews matter?” International Journal of Hospitality Management 77, 147-158.

[23] Sai Liang, Jiajia Tian, Jianchao Diao, Chunxiao Li*, 2021. “Research on the Influencing Factor of Tourists’ Emotional Heterogeneity of Online Ratings Based on Tri-dimensional Theory,” Nankai Business Review, online. .(in Chinese)

[24]. Qiang Ye, Sai Liang*, Daying Zhao, 2021. “Summary and Prospects of Research on Tourism User Generated Content in the Chinese Context,” Tourism and Hospitality Prospects, 5(4), 16-36.(in Chinese)

（Translator：BI Jianwu，Proofreading：LI Chunxiao）