Leisure Agricultural Park Selection for Traveler Groups Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

With the widespread vaccination against COVID-19, people began to resume regional tourism. Outdoor attractions, such as leisure agricultural parks, are particularly attractive because they are well ventilated and can prevent the spread of COVID-19. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the considerations around choosing a leisure agricultural park are different from usual, and will be affected by uncertainty. Therefore, this research proposes a fuzzy collaborative intelligence (FCI) approach to help select leisure agricultural parks suitable for traveler groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed FCI approach combines asymmetrically calibrated fuzzy geometric mean (acFGM), fuzzy weighted intersection (FWI), and fuzzy Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (fuzzy VIKOR), which is a novel attempt in this field. The effectiveness of the proposed FCI approach has been verified by a case study in Taichung City, Taiwan. The results of the case study showed that during the COVID-19 pandemic, travelers (especially traveler groups) were very willing to go to leisure agricultural parks. In addition, the most important criterion for choosing a suitable leisure agricultural park was the ease of maintaining social distance, while the least important criterion was the distance from a leisure agricultural park. Further, the successful recommendation rate using the proposed methodology was as high as 90%.