A Gate-and-Menu Theory of Collective Tourism Brand Value

2026-07-20

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenges of value allocation and insufficient maintenance incentives in collectively managed tourism brands by proposing a “Gate–Menu” theoretical framework, wherein “Gates” denote critical, non-replicable weak-link public goods, and “Menus” refer to replicable, diversified attractions. Leveraging large language models to extract construct-based indicators from travel guide texts and validating them externally against UNESCO World Heritage listings, the authors employ the Aumann–Shapley value to allocate brand value across assets through cooperative game theory. Empirical analysis across 166 economies reveals that degradation of “Gate” assets exerts a persistent and significant negative impact on brand value, whereas the marginal effect of additional “Menu” items diminishes toward zero. The framework’s validity and policy relevance are further demonstrated through an internal pollution ranking of France’s four major wine regions.

Abstract

A collective tourism brand is jointly produced by assets managed by different custodians, so destination managers must decide which assets require collective protection. We model a destination as a gate times a menu. The gate combines essential inputs and non-reproducible anchors as a weaker-link public good; the menu combines many reproducible attractions through love of variety. Deterioration of a binding gate element has a non-vanishing, brand-wide effect, whereas an individual menu attraction's share vanishes as the menu grows. Aumann-Shapley accounting allocates the jointly produced brand value across assets. Under stated surplus and non-use-value conditions, a decentralized custodian weakly under-maintains physical gate quality holding other qualities fixed. We measure the framework's constructs from guide text with two language models across 166 economies, subject the gate labels to a partial external check against the World Heritage List, and illustrate a within-brand contamination ordering with four French wine regions.

Problem

• collective tourism brand
• brand value
• asset protection
• gate-and-menu theory
• destination management

Innovation

• Gate-and-Menu theory
• collective tourism brand
• Aumann-Shapley value
• non-reproducible anchors
• language model measurement