Toward an understanding of online information processing in e-tourism: does national culture matter?

ABSTRACT

Tourism is undoubtedly among the industries that better reflect the effects of globalization, technological advances (i.e. the Internet) being one of the most relevant drivers. Given the current market saturation of this sector, a better understanding of how tourists from different cultures process online information and forge their attitudes and behavioral intentions is called for. Nevertheless, national culture may have a major influence on the effectiveness of online tourist marketing activities. This study contributes to the extant body of knowledge via the analysis of the influence of perceived risk on how tourists process the information while browsing a tourist destination website, form their attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the destination. The effect of national culture on such antecedents is examined via a cross-cultural research to compare Spanish and British cultures. A theoretical model is proposed to integrate the effect of perceived risk and variables regarding technology acceptance on tourist responses.

KEYWORDS:

• Cross-cultural study
• perceived risk online
• website acceptance
• e-tourism
• satisfaction
• attitudes
• behavioral intention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a research project of group ADEMAR (University of Granada, Spain) under the auspices of the Andalusian Program for R&D, number P12-SEJ-2592, and Research Program from the Faculty of Education, Economy and Technology of Ceuta.