Seniors’ dual route of persuasive communications in mobile social media and the moderating role of discretionary time

ABSTRACT

More than two-thirds of seniors use smartphones and in South Korea, over half of all senior smartphone owners are mobile social media (MSM) users. This study tested two basic routes to persuasion in the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), applying the new concepts of benefits and authentic experience among senior MSM users for travel- and tourism-related purposes, along with the moderating role of discretionary time spent on MSM. To this end, an online survey was conducted for senior MSM users for tourism activities, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was employed to analyze data obtained from 500 study participants. Results reveal that argument quality had a stronger effect on benefit than source credibility. Benefits and authentic experience played important mediating roles in the ELM. Discretionary time on MSM played a significant moderating role in the central and peripheral routes. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed in the conclusions section.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile social media
• elaboration likelihood model
• authentic experience
• discretionary time
• seniors

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Myung Ja Kim http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8077-8503

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2015S1A5A2A03049328).