Accounting & Marketing

The Effect of Social Media on Tourism Consumer Adoption Intention: Evidence from Urumqi

Abstract

Qian Cao, Bin Yu and Xiao-Xia Tian Tian

Social media provide tourism consumers with a two-way communication and interaction platform. They can not only search and adopt tourism evaluation information of others when making travelling decisions, but also instantly share tourism experience and satisfaction when travelling. We randomly survey 1100 tourism consumers in Urumqi of China to test the effect of characteristic of social media on tourism consumer adoption intention, as well as explore individual heterogeneity. The result shows: interactivity, service quality, information effectiveness, convenience and participation have a significantly positive influence on tourism consumer adoption intention; the higher is tourism consumers’ education level, the more they pay attention to sharing and connectivity; the higher is tourism consumers’ income level, the more they pay attention service quality and information effectiveness. In addition, the frequency of using social media and engaging in tourism activities has a positive effect on adoption intention.