Intentions to use social media in organizing and taking vacation trips
Introduction
In the last few years, we have seen a huge growth of user-generated content on the Internet through the use of a series of tools that have generically been defined as online social media, although other terms such as Web 2.0 technologies have also been used (Sigala & Marinidis, 2009). This area is one of the fastest growing segments on the web, and it includes social sharing of opinions through blogs and microblogs (i.e. Blogger and Twitter), social photo and video sharing (i.e. Flickr and YouTube), social sharing of knowledge (i.e. Wikipedia), social bookmarking (i.e. Delicious) and many other forms of user-generated content. These social media tools allow users to search, organize, share, annotate and contribute to contents in a collaborative way.
It is of vital importance that tourism organization managers and destination policy makers understand the antecedents of the tourists’ use and adoption of social media before, during and after their trips due to the impact of these collaborative behaviors on tourists’ decisions about the choice of all the elements of the trip (destination, accommodation, activities, restaurants, …).
In fact, virtual tourist communities in which tourists exchange opinions and experiences have been around for more than 10 years now, but lately we have seen an expansion of Web 2.0 technologies into tourism. Thus, before and during vacation trips, tourists use the Internet to obtain information about the trips, share their experiences and compare services related to the trip. The use of tools to share photos and videos, to blog and to microblog, as well as the use of podcasts, customer ratings and evaluation systems, maps, etc. in order to organize trips or contribute experiences and recommendations, is becoming generalized (Chung & Buhalis, 2008) in what has been named as Travel 2.0 (Adam, Cobos, & Liu, 2007).
While the importance of the use of social media in the context of tourist experiences has been widely studied in recent years, most studies have been related to specific tools (i.e. blogs or photo sharing) or to relational environments of a single community (i.e. TripAdvisor), (Chung, 2008, Hsu and Lin, 2008, Wang and Fesenmaier, 2004a). However, the collaborative behaviors and the use of technologies that support them go beyond the context of a specific tool and even belonging, or not, to a particular community. Individuals access the Internet to seek information, to communicate, or simply to pass the time (Rodgers & Sheldon, 2002) and it is evident that tourists will increasingly use technologies to express their opinions and to share information. (O’Connor, 2008).
This work addresses the use of social media to organize and take vacation trips from an overall perspective and is not restricted to the use of a specific tool or to one community. That use is related not only to the different phases of the trip (before, during and after) but also to the different levels of use (consulting and/or contributing content).
The purpose and the importance of this work is to expand the existing models on the tourists’ use of these technologies by testing a model based on previous concepts. This study has three objectives: to construct a theoretical model on the use of social media on vacation trips that contemplates, in a generalized fashion, the set of these tools; to test and refine the proposed theoretical model by means of structural equations, using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique; and to evaluate the strength and direction of the influence of those factors on their use.
Section snippets
Theoretical foundations and development hypotheses
In this study, we start from the models that Wang and Fesenmaier (2004a) proposed regarding the active participation of members of a travel community. The model has been generalized to consider the intentions to use social media in general and not only in participation in travel communities.
Our proposed model considers the intention to use social media in the process of organizing and taking vacation trips as dependent variable. It suggests that these intentions are influenced by the
Data gathering
The population of the study comprises individuals who regularly take vacation trips and have access to the Internet. With the means of delimiting the sample from an operational point of view, the data for this research were obtained from a sample of the population of the Canary Islands who met the two requisites of habitual Internet use and having traveled for vacations in the previous 12 months, this is a non-probabilistic sampling procedure was followed.
The data was gathered via the web by
Data analysis method
The method chosen to analyze the data was the structural equations method, using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique (Fornell & Cha, 1994). This technique is designed to reflect the theoretical and empirical characteristics of social sciences and behavioral characteristics, in which we often find theories with insufficient support or little information available (Wold, 1979). More specifically, we use SmartPLS 3.0 build M3 (Ringle, Wende, and Will, 2005).
The PLS technique is frequently
Conclusions and implications
Our objective in conducting this work was to identify the extent to which the benefits, costs and incentives could influence the intentions to use the social media. In that respect, the types of benefits under consideration are functional, psychological and hedonic, and social; while the costs are: time and monetary; difficulty of use; and loss of privacy. For their part, the incentives comprise of personal predisposition, trust, altruism, having access to the technology and the environment.
Limitations and implications for future research
There are two significant limitations regarding the sample: firstly, the individuals who completed the questionnaire do not necessarily represent the study’s target group since response was voluntary, and secondly, the geographical context comprised a single zone (the Canary Islands). Those issues may mean a bias in the results; however, some previous works argue that, since very specific and selective publics are used, the results provide a valuable framework for managers of tourist
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank their translator Mr. Martin F. Cartwright, who died recently, had participated enormously in the successes of this paper.
References (99)
Designing mature internet business strategies: The ICDT model
European Management Journal
(1997)- et al.
Managing behavioral intentions in diverse cultural environments: An investigation of service quality, service value, and satisfaction for American and Ecuadorian fast-food customers
Journal of International Management
(2001) - et al.
Assessing the effects of quality, value and customer satisfaction on consumer behavioural intentions in service environments
Journal of Retailing
(2000) - et al.
Acceptance of blog usage: The roles of technology acceptance, social influence and knowledge sharing motivation
Information and Management
(2008) User acceptance of microcomputer technology: An empirical test
OMEGA International Journal of Management Science
(1993)- et al.
Switching barriers and repurchase intentions in services
Journal of Retailing
(2000) - et al.
Value-based adoption of mobile internet: An empirical investigation
Decision Support Systems
(2007) E-tribalized marketing? The strategic implications of virtual communities of consumption
European Management Journal
(1999)- et al.
Investigating the relationships among perceived value, satisfaction, and recommendations: the case of the Korean DMZ
Tourism Management
(2007) - et al.
A cross-cultural study of switching barriers and propensity to stay with service providers
Journal of Retailing
(2003)
Information technology as a determinant of organizational learning and technological distinctive competencies
Industrial Marketing Management
Customer benefits and company consequences of customer–salesperson relationships in retailing
Journal of Retailing
Consumer perceived value: The development of a multiple item scale
Journal of Retailing
PLS path modeling
Computational Statistics and Data Analysis
Measure of perceived end-user computing skills
Information and Management
Defining the virtual tourist community: Implications for tourism marketing
Tourism Management
Towards understanding members’ general participation in and active contribution to an online travel community
Tourism Management
Travel 2.0: Trends in industry awareness and adoption
Relationship marketing and brand involvement of professionals through web-enhanced brand communities: Coloplast case
Industrial Marketing Management
The partial least squares (PLS) approach to causal modeling: Personal computer adoption and use as an illustration
Technological Studies
Four motives for community involvement
Journal of Social Issues
Measurement of consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence
Journal of Consumer Research
Further validation of the consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence
Advances in Consumer Research
To opt-in or opt-out: That depends on the question
Communications of the ACM
Predictors of online buying behavior
Communications of the ACM
Behavioral intention formation in knowledge sharing: Examining the roles of extrinsic motivators, social-psychological forces, and organizational climate
MIS Quarterly
Communities of commerce
Identifying significant factors influencing consumer trust in an online travel site
Information Technology & Tourism
Issues and opinion on structure equation modeling
MIS Quarterly
Structural equation modeling analysis with small samples using partial least squares
On-line communities: Helping them form and grow
Journal of Knowledge Management
Assessing the worldwide developments of national spatial data clearinghouses
International Journal of Geographical Information Science
User acceptance of E-collaborative technology: An extension of the technology acceptance model
Group Decision and Negotiation
Learning the web: Internet user experience and response to web marketing in Sweden
Journal of Interactive Advertising
Multidimensional constructs in organizational behavior research: An integrative analytical framework
Organizational Research Methods
Small group decision making: Communication and the group process
Two structural models: LISREL and PLS applied to consumer exit-voice theory
Journal of Marketing Research
Partial least squares
Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error
Journal of Marketing Research
The relative importance of perceived ease of use in IS adoption: A study of E-commerce adoption
Journal of the Association for Information Systems
A predictive approach to the random effects model
Biometrica
Measuring motivations for online opinion seeking
Journal of Interactive Advertising
Consumer generated content – Trends and implications for branding
E-Review of Tourism Research
Online travel reviews study: Role & impact of online travel reviews
Cited by (297)
Connecting BOP consumers and retailers: What drives small-time retailing through social media?
2024, Journal of Retailing and Consumer ServicesThe impact of online tax community advice on individual taxpayer decision making
2023, Advances in AccountingA multilevel analysis of adoption intention of travel information on social media: Evidence from China
2023, Travel Behaviour and SocietyStrategizing green destination image through social media functionality: A study of the tourism industry
2024, Business Strategy and DevelopmentThe role of online identity orientation and socializing for information search: a case of ethnic minority guests’ hospitality experiences
2024, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management