Assessment of Ecotourism Travel Risk on Word-of-Mouth: Via Fuzzy Set Perspective

Because of the subjective cognition on Word-Of Mouth (WOM) influence and the fuzziness on perceived-risk judgment, perceived risk in WOM Influence is a venture variable, which cannot be measured directly. The aim of this study is to define the mathematics meaning of the influence and develop a new fuzzy set method to build the influence membership function to exactly measure the perceived risk in WOM influence. From the fuzzy synthetic index of WOM influence, we can understand the membership grade for each influence factor, which reflects the WOM receivers’ preference cognition and value. Finally, we use the Taiwan consumers of the ecotourism as an example to do empirical study. The result shows that the financial and physical risks attributes in WOM are higher and more significant. This implies that consumers have the characteristic of higher perceived risk in WOM and they prefer the averse strategy of buying the ecotourism assurance.