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- Developing Conversational AI to Enhance the Tourist ExperiencePublication . Jardim, Bruno; Dona, Ricardo Montenegro; Neto, Miguel de Castro; Barnabé, Sandra; Information Management Research Center (MagIC) - NOVA Information Management School; NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS)Tourism in Porto has expanded considerably over the last decade, with the number of visitors doubling between 2009 and 2019 and continuing to rise in recent years. This rapid growth creates challenges for the sustainable management of tourist inflows and highlights the need for innovative, data-driven solutions that can both support visitors and relieve pressure on local infrastructures. In response, this study proposes the development of a conversational AI system specifically designed to assist tourists in their daily activities and improve their overall experience of the city. The conversational AI is based on a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework, which combines an information retrieval component with a generative model to deliver accurate, context-aware responses. To ensure reliability, the system draws on more than 7,000 documents from diverse sources, including cultural guides, tourism platforms, and official city websites. Several experiments were conducted to identify the best performing system configuration, testing different retrieval strategies, ranking methods, and model architectures. The final solution demonstrates high retrieval accuracy and generates responses that score strongly on semantic similarity and answer quality metrics. Overall, the study demonstrates the potential of conversational AI systems as valuable tools for urban destinations facing growing tourist demand. Beyond Porto, this work illustrates how data-efficient conversational systems can support sustainable tourism management, improve the visitor experience, and serve as scalable solutions for cities with similar challenges worldwide.
- Drivers and outcomes of electrical vehicle use behaviorPublication . Gonçalves, Luis; Neves, Catarina; Oliveira, Tiago; NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS); Information Management Research Center (MagIC) - NOVA Information Management School; ElsevierElectric vehicles have emerged as a powerful alternative in fighting against climate change and dependence on limited fossil fuels. However, widespread adoption hasn’t reached the levels initially predicted. Moreover, the post-adoption outcomes are still an underdeveloped topic. This study addresses this gap by examining both the antecedents and outcomes of electric vehicle (EV) use behavior. Grounded on the belief-action-outcome framework and a mixed methods design, combining qualitative interviews with EV users and a quantitative survey analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results revealed that environmentally friendly information positively influenced electric vehicle use and strengthened the relationship between use and perceived well-being and task performance. Additionally, perceived value and ease of use are key drivers of EV use, while environmental concern and financial incentives are not significant. Importantly, EV use positively influences both perceived well-being and task performance, highlighting the broader humanistic and instrumental benefits of adoption. This study contributes to the literature by extending EV research beyond adoption to include post-adoption outcomes and by demonstrating the critical role of informational factors in shaping both behavior and outcomes. Practically, the findings suggest that policymakers and firms should prioritize clear environmental communication and user-centered design over financial incentives to promote EV use and enhance user benefits.
- Tourism Walkability IndexPublication . Areosa, Inês; Jardim, Bruno; Barnabé, Sandra; Neto, Miguel de Castro; Information Management Research Center (MagIC) - NOVA Information Management School; NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS)Walking plays a central role in how tourists experience cities, yet most walkability measures remain oriented toward residents and do not reflect the specific spatial behaviours, sensitivities, and motivations of visitors. Existing indices typically overlook the importance of cultural access, environmental comfort, and safety perceptions for tourist mobility. As a result, there is a need for tourism-specific approaches that can capture how walkability varies within cities and how it relates to tourist mobility patterns. This paper proposes the Tourism Walkability Index (TWI), a fully geospatial and street-level framework designed to quantify walkability from a tourist perspective. The TWI integrates three dimensions – accessibility to relevant points of interest, access to public and shared transport systems and comfort conditions shaped by infrastructure and environmental quality. These dimensions are operationalised using a pedestrian network with slope-adjusted travel times and geospatial datasets describing urban amenities, mobility services, and comfort-related variables such as lighting, pedestrianisation, heat exposure, air quality, noise and traffic safety. The TWI is applied to four cities in northern Portugal – Porto, Braga, Guimarães and Vila Real – representing contrasting data environments and urban morphologies. Across all cities, the TWI reveals a recurring spatial structure: historic centres emerge as the most walkable areas, while peripheral zones consistently score lower. The fine spatial resolution reveal micro-scale contrasts that broader neighbourhood metrics obscure, including highly accessible but low-comfort streets, and comfortable yet poorly connected areas. These patterns highlight opportunities for targeted interventions, improved tourist dispersal, and enhanced alignment between tourism mobility and urban liveability goals. The multi-city application further demonstrates that the TWI yields coherent results even when only open data are available, indicating that its conceptual structure is robust and transferable. By providing a replicable, open-source workflow and fine-grained urban diagnostics, the TWI offers a practical tool for integrating walkability into tourism planning and sustainable mobility management.
- Tourism Through the 15-Minute LensPublication . Oliveira, Rita; Pelliza, Candela S.; Jardim, Bruno; Barnabé, Sandra; Neto, Miguel de Castro; Information Management Research Center (MagIC) - NOVA Information Management School; NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS)The 15-minute city concept has become a cornerstone of modern urban planning. Despite its worldwide application, research has mostly focused on accessibility to essential services, while accessibility to tourism remains less explored. Tourism, key to urban identity, livability, and visitor management, needs to be considered within proximity planning. In this context, analysing travel times and accessibility to tourist locations across different travel modes represents a key opportunity to gain insight into how these shape cities. This study applies the 15-minute city framework to tourism, characterizing accessibility from a visitor’s perspective. Porto, Portugal, a city facing the impacts of massive tourism, is used as a pilot area to measure access to touristic amenities. Using the Porto open data portal, we compiled 290 points of interest across eight tourism categories. For every Base Reference Geographical Information (BGRI) cell, the Portuguese census tracts,we computed the centroid and generated network-based travel times to each amenity for walking, cycling, and driving. From the origin-destination matrices, we derived a set of 15-minute city indicators, namely minimum travel time required to reach the amenities and counts and percentage of amenities reachable within 5/10/15 minutes. Results show how accessibility patterns vary by parishes and travel mode and offer a reproducible base for urban planning and destination management. The outcomes reveal that accessibility to tourism is strongly centre-weighted: the historic centre offers short walking times and high amenity variety, while the eastern and northern edges face slower access and fewer choices. Trips starting from two central parishes reach 43% of amenities within a 15-minute walk, while trips originating in peripheral parishes typically reach only 5% to 9%. Cycling enhances accessibility by making accessible a variety of amenities across most parishes within 10 minutes and nearly citywide by 15 minutes. This work reframes 15-minute accessibility around tourism, providing a multimodal transportation assessment, translating analytics into actionable indicators. The framework supports policymaker in diversifying attraction availability in underserved areas, distributing visitor flows, and aligning cultural-access goals with livability agendas, promoting smart cities' development.