ACUX Typology: A Harmonisation of Cultural-Visitor Typologies for Multi-Profile Classification

Abstract

The modern cultural industry and the related academic sectors have shown increased interest in Cultural User eXperience (CUX) research, since it constitutes a critical factor to examine and apply when presenting cultural content. Recent CUX studies show that visitors tend to carry their own cultural characteristics and preferences when visiting destinations of cultural interest, thus obtaining a virtually unique experience. To cope with this tendency, various research efforts have been made to identify different profiles of cultural visitors based on their background and preferences and classify them into distinct visitor types. In this paper, we proposed the ACUX (Augmented Cultural User eXperience) typology for classifying visitors of cultural destinations. The proposed typology aims to provide the multi-profile classification of cultural visitors based on their visiting preferences. Methodology-wise, the ACUX typology was the output of a harmonisation process of existing cultural-visitor typologies that base their classification on visiting preferences. The proposed typology was evaluated in juxtaposition with the harmonised typologies from which it was derived through an experiment conducted using a recommender and a dataset of TripAdvisor user responses. The evaluation showed that the ACUX typology achieved a more accurate profiling of cultural visitors, enabling them to reduce information overload by directly suggesting content that is more likely to meet their diverse preferences and needs.