Electronic Word-of-Mouth at Ecotourism Geosites: Comparing Destination Image Across Two Sacred Monkey Forests in Bali
Despite a massive 73-fold disparity in online review volume, this study reveals that the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary and Sangeh Monkey Forest in Bali share statistically indistinguishable positive sentiment profiles and destination image structures, with their visibility gap attributed to platform-specific market composition rather than differences in visitor experience.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine two magical forests in Bali, Indonesia, both filled with long-tailed monkeys and ancient temples. They are like twin siblings: they have the same type of monkeys, the same spiritual vibe, and the same local community managing them. One is the famous Sacred Monkey Forest in Ubud, and the other is the quieter Sangeh Monkey Forest.
This paper is a detective story about what happens when people talk about these two places online.
The Great Review Disparity
Think of TripAdvisor as a giant, noisy town square where tourists shout their opinions.
- The Famous Twin (Ubud): Has a massive crowd shouting in the square. It has over 35,000 reviews.
- The Quiet Twin (Sangeh): Has a tiny crowd. It only has about 486 reviews.
That's a 73-to-1 difference. Usually, when one place is reviewed 73 times more than another, we assume the first place is just "better" or more popular. But this study found something surprising: The monkeys and the forests are actually rated almost exactly the same.
The "Taste Test" (Sentiment Analysis)
The researchers acted like food critics, but instead of tasting food, they "tasted" the words in the reviews using computer software.
- The Result: Both forests got a "thumbs up" from about 89% of the people who wrote reviews.
- The Score: If you gave them a happiness score from -1 to +1, both got a score around 0.66.
- The Conclusion: The actual experience of visiting both places is statistically identical. The huge gap in review numbers isn't because one is better; it's just because the famous one has a much louder megaphone.
Why the Difference in Numbers?
So, why is the famous forest so much louder?
The study found a clue in who is writing the reviews.
- The Famous Forest: Mostly visited by international tourists who love TripAdvisor.
- The Quiet Forest: Visited by many more local Indonesian tourists.
Here's the analogy: Imagine two restaurants. One is famous with tourists who always write on Yelp. The other is loved by locals who prefer posting on Instagram or telling their friends face-to-face. If you only look at Yelp, the local favorite looks invisible, even though it's just as good. The study suggests Sangeh isn't "invisible" because it's bad; it's just invisible on that specific platform because its visitors use different tools to share their stories.
What Are People Actually Talking About?
The researchers also looked at what people said, sorting their words into three buckets:
- The "What I Saw" Bucket (Cognitive): Describing the trees, the monkeys, and the temples.
- The "What I Did" Bucket (Conative): Saying "I recommend this" or "Don't feed the monkeys."
- The "How I Felt" Bucket (Affective): Expressing deep spiritual joy, awe, or emotional connection.
The Big Surprise:
Almost 65% of the reviews were just "What I Saw." About 35% were "What I Did." But the "How I Felt" bucket was almost empty (less than 1%).
Even though these are sacred forests meant to inspire spiritual feelings, the online reviews rarely captured that emotion. It's as if people went to a beautiful cathedral, felt deeply moved, but when they got home and wrote a review, they only wrote about the architecture and the ticket price, forgetting to mention the feeling of peace. The format of online reviews seems to push people to be factual reporters rather than emotional storytellers.
The Different Stories
While the overall happiness was the same, the types of stories people told were slightly different:
- Ubud (Famous): People tended to tell one big, holistic story about their whole day, mixing the monkeys, the temples, and the vibe into one narrative.
- Sangeh (Quiet): People's stories were more scattered. Some focused on the beauty of the nutmeg trees, others on interacting with the monkeys, and others on the whole experience, all in roughly equal amounts.
The Takeaway
This paper teaches us two main lessons:
- Don't judge a book by its cover (or a forest by its review count): A place with fewer online reviews isn't necessarily worse; it might just have a different crowd of visitors who use different apps.
- Online reviews miss the magic: When we rely only on internet reviews to understand a place, we miss the deep, spiritual, and emotional feelings that make a "sacred" place special. The internet is great for facts, but it's terrible at capturing the soul of a place.
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