Determinants of tourists’ intention to share travel experience on social media: an fsQCA application

ABSTRACT

Sharing travel experience on social media has gained substantial popularity in the Internet era. However, existing knowledge about tourists’ determinants for sharing remains inconsistent and scattered. This study seeks to propose an innovative direction to analyze the determinants of tourists’ intention to share travel experience on social media. Building upon the complexity theory, this study implemented an asymmetrical analysis by applying the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) approach on a sample of 383 valid questionnaires. A structural equation modeling analysis and cross-tabulation analysis were also performed. The results revealed five causal configurations of determinants that lead to Chinese tourists’ high sharing intention on WeChat. The finding fills the gap in research on determinants to share travel experiences on strong-tie social media platforms and offers practical insights and marketing advice about how to encourage tourists to share their travel experiences on mainstream social media.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• user-generated content
• strong-tie network
• travel-experience sharing intention
• WeChat
• fsQCA

Disclosure statement

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