The Implicit and Explicit Motivations of Tourist Behaviour in Sharing Travel Photographs on Instagram: A Path and Cluster Analysis

In the era of digitalisation, social media has not only transformed tourism marketing and management [1], but also drastically influenced tourist behaviour regarding how they share experiences and connect with one another [2]. In the multiphasic travel stages, the use of social media mediates the process of information search, decision making, experience co-creation, networking, and the creation of long-lasting memories [3, 4]. Platforms commonly used by tourists are Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. In particular, in quest of vivid content (e.g. pictures and videos) [5], Instagram has rapidly emerged as a trendy channel for tourists, especially the young tech-savvy generation, to share their travel experiences [3, 6]. Comparing to other social media sites that are text intensive, pictures shared on Instagram create inspiration [7] and trigger potential tourists’ imagination towards a destination [8]. This can be evidenced by several studies related to Instagram tourism published recently [7‐9]. In a nutshell, existing literature has focused on the role of Instagram in the perceived and projected destination image [10, 11], destination branding [9], tourists’ perceptions and online reactions (e.g. likes and comment) [6], the effectiveness of visual content [8], and the influence on travel planning [10]. Instagram has been proved as an essential tool for tourists to express their experiences, in which, about 45% of users reported travel as their top interests on Instagram [12]. However, since the existing research often addressed Instagram from the perspectives of destination marketers, the antecedents of sharing photographs on Instagram remain ambiguous. Scholars also claim that the role of Instagram is in its infancy in the content of travel and tourism [6, 8, 9].

Due to the strong social presence and the growth of social media, sharing travel experiences online merits attention among scholars and practitioners [2, 13, 14]. Understanding the motivations behind one’s posting behaviour is valuable in that it provides deeper insight on the social, cultural and environmental characteristics of travellers, and thereby offering marketers suggestions to improve their management and marketing strategies accordingly [15]. An earlier study categorises factors influencing users’ online behaviour according to the type of content and the type of social media into individual action and personal cognition motivation, self-centred motivation and community-related motivation [16]. Other scholars suggest that consumers use social media to share experiences because of the need for higher social status [17, 18], entertainment [17], social interaction [16], belongingness [16], and documentation [19], among many others. Given that tourists are influenced by various implicit and explicit motives to use social media during trips, Instagram as the most popular site for travel posts [20] remains underexplored.

Seeing the potentials of Instagram in optimising strategic planning and tourism promotion, this cross-domain study brings together social psychology, motivational theories, and social media in tourism. The objectives of this research is (1) to develop a conceptual framework for the motivations of tech-savvy tourists to post on Instagram while travelling and (2) to categorise tourists into different segments according to their characteristics. Theoretically, this study contributes to the body of literature on Instagram and tourism, and extends the existing knowledge on consumer behaviour in the digital sphere. Practically, the current study provides insights for tourism marketers to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of marketing strategies based on tourists’ internal and external motives of using Instagram.

Motivations refer to one’s enthusiasm for doing something [19], which can be classified into intrinsic and extrinsic triggers. The former suggests that the engagement of behaviours arises from within an individual, whereas the latter is driven by the motives to gain external rewards/avoid punishment [21]. Examples of intrinsic factors are enjoyment, emotional connection, self-identification, and self-expression. Extrinsic motivations include economic incentives, personal goals, and social networking.

Specific to Instagram-related literature, knowledge about others, selfdocumentation, coolness, and creativity are proved to be the most influential reasons for consumers to use Instagram [22]. Different from Facebook or Twitter, users often engage in the Instagram community to keep up with what their friends, family, or strangers are doing [22]. Another study takes the psychosocial factors into account, suggesting that enjoyment serves as a crucial factor for users to devote time to Instagram [23]. Other scholars claim that social media functions as a platform for consumers to present the best of themselves [24]. Accelerated by emerging visual-centered digital platforms, individuals can express and project different aspects of the self through photographs [24]. For instance, Eckhaus and Sheaffer [25] underpin that sharing content on social media improves the extent of self-esteem. Similarly, another research identifies self-expression as one of the main factors of using Instagram [23].

Apart from individuals’ self motives, tourists also share travel-related photographs in an attempt to gain social status and prestige [17,18]. Tourists could fulfil prestige by visiting destinations that impress their friends and family [26] or experiencing something others have not travelled to [27]. As social media features instantaneity by nature, tourists can already gain gratification and recognition even during the trip [18] by uploading photographs in real-time. This foreseeable reward thus fosters tourists’ intentions to use Instagram while traveling. The uniqueness of each tourism experience implies that tourists can receive different kinds of social return from other online users [18] through liking, commenting, and sharing behaviour [6].

While investigating the fundamental motives to share experiences on social media has received tremendous interests, it appears that there is no general consensus among researchers. Some studies support the notion of external motivations [16, 28], while others argue that internal motives are the most influential drivers affecting user behaviour [17, 21, 23, 24, 29]. Therefore, driven by the sophistication of psychological, social, and environmental factors, the diversity of tourists’ posting behaviour on Instagram during trips calls an urgent need to develop a holistic framework to better understand the underlying characteristics of tech-savvy tourists. The development of the conceptual model is explained in the following methodological sections.

This research adopted a triangulation of a diary study and a survey method to identify tourists’ motivations to post on Instagram during trips. Methodology consisted four steps: (1) conducting diary studies, (2) refining the conceptual model, (3) developing the survey and collecting data, (4) implementing path analysis and cluster analysis.

As motivations are the primary drivers of purchase decisions, it is critical for tourism providers to understand tourists’ physiological and psychological needs and wants in order to refine their marketing strategies. Seeing the power of user-generated content, investigating users’ motivations to post on social media has been an emerging topic within the academia [22‐24]. With a particular focus on Instagram, although recent research has attempted to bridge Instagram to tourism [7‐9], the internal and external motives for young tourists to post on Instagram during trips are underexplored.

The current research thus presents a motivational framework and classifies tourists into four distinct segments. In line with previous literature [17, 21, 23, 29, 32], this study affirms that enjoyment, self-esteem, social ties, recognition, interests, social norms, goals, self-efficacy, outcome expectations and prestige, are related with users’ motivations to post on Instagram while travelling. Notably, in addition to the fact that users would like to elevate their status and gain prestige by sharing on social media sites [25, 35], this study uncovers other factors that are more internal and self-centred such as recognition, enjoyment and self-esteem. This result can be interpreted from the nature of Instagram which focuses on visual content. Unlike other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, Instagram functions as a social media site for individuals to present the best of themselves through photographs [24]. Furthermore, different from Facebook featuring a closed-knit community of people know each other, Instagram allows users to build and join communities according to their own interests. Thus, Instagram potentially decreases one’s intention to be recognised within his or her social network. In the case of travelling, self-efficacy and outcome expectations are found to be more influential on affecting users’ motivations to share on Instagram. In addition to the factors commonly mentioned by previous studies, the current research is novel in that it reveals ‘memorabilia’ as another crucial motive for tourists to post pictures on Instagram, which has never been mentioned in previous motivational research. Nevertheless, this finding is somehow in line with some recent studies, suggesting that taking photographs function as a way to create personal collections of memories [36, 37].

Moreover, this research proposes charming adventurers, silent spectators, photo collectors and immersed creators as the dominant tourist segments when sharing travel experiences on Instagram. First, charming adventurers mainly post for their own benefit and enjoyment but not for the sake of community relations. This contradicts to the study of van Dijk [38], where social ties are not directly linked to external motives. Instead, the current research discovers that social ties affect trust and recognition, and thereby leading to individual motivations and behaviours. As for silent spectators, members of this cluster also tend to be more influenced by the community’s norms and are expecting a certain outcome from the posts they share while travelling. Next, photo collectors are considered as the most passive tourists on Instagram because their main motivations are to post for themselves for the purpose of saving memories. Though, ‘memorabilia’ is in fact similar to souvenirs. It is well-known that tourists have impulse to commemorate their experiences by purchasing souvenirs [39]. With improvements in technologies, souvenirs can be presented in the form of visual narratives. A recent study suggests that by analysing memorabilia, marketers can understand more on tourists’ preferences and psychological needs in order to facilitate the creation of meaningful travel experiences [40]. Lastly, immersed creators share pictures not only for their own benefits but also for the community. Storing memories and reflecting on their interests are the most important motives for them, followed by enjoyment.

On the whole, this study extends the existing knowledge on Instagram and tourism by conceptualising an Instagram motivational framework concerning with users’ posting behaviour. Specifically, first, this research goes beyond travel experiences that have been often investigated by recent studies. Meanwhile, unlike most of the literature that considers young travellers as the same group of Instagram users, this study clusters digital natives based on their characteristics of Instagram usage. By looking at the intersections of social psychology, motivational theories, and social media in the context of tourism, this research highlights the significance in incorporating tourists’ behaviour as well as their internal and external motives of using Instagram in the era of digitalisation. Practically, by understanding tourists’ motivations, marketers and tourism-related businesses can improve their media communication and marketing techniques accordingly to boost tourists’ intentions to share photographs on Instagram in the multiphasic travel stages. Finally, marketers are recommended to develop various strategies based on digital natives’ characteristics to maximise the effectiveness of communication strategies through Instagram.

Nonetheless, the current research is not without limitations. First, this research implemented a convenient sampling method, in which, the participants are dominated by Austrian and German. Readers should bear in mind the potential cultural differences between users on Instagram on different continents. Furthermore, given that this is the first study to propose a motivational framework for Instagram travellers concerning with their posting behaviour, future research is recommended to further validate the results due to the infancy of the study context. On a broader marketing discipline focusing on social media, future studies are suggested to investigate whether the proposed model can be adopted in other similar social media sites such as Pinterest. Lastly, this research reinforces memorabilia as an emerging but underexplored field in studies related to user-generated content. Scholars are thus encouraged to continue this line of research in various digital context such as YouTube, Facebook, and online travel review platforms.