Cannot wait to share? An exploration of tourists’ sharing behavior during the ‘traveling to the site’ stage

ABSTRACT

Although tourists’ social media sharing behavior has been well documented in existing literature, few studies have examined tourists’ early-stage sharing behaviors and their impact on the sharers. As one of the earliest stages of the tourism experience, tourists’ sharing behavior during the ‘traveling to the site’ stage undoubtedly affects their subsequent travel experience. Therefore, a thorough understanding of tourists’ social media sharing motivations while ‘traveling to the site’ is necessary, as is the impact of such sharing behavior on the sharers’ subsequent tourism stages. This study identified two categories of motivations for sharing behavior and three ways in which sharing behavior affects the sharer's subsequent travel experience using qualitative research methods and the interaction ritual chain theory.

KEYWORDS:

• Sharing behavior
• social media
• ‘traveling to the site’ stage
• interaction ritual chain theory
• WeChat Moments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).