Welcome to the destination! Social media influencers as cogent determinant of travel decision: A systematic literature review and conceptual framework

Figures & data

Figure 1. Number of social network users worldwide from 2017 to 2025.

(Source: www.statista.com/)

Figure 2. Popular social networks globally ranked by number of active users.

(Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/)

Figure 3. Market growth forecast.

(Source: https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5140211/online-travel-bookingplatform-global-strategic)

Figure 4. PRISMA flow diagram for systematic literature search.

Source: Authors’ compilation based on literature search.

Figure 5. Total number of references included in the paper.

Figure 6. Type of studies listed under section 3.2.

Figure 7. Region wise description of the selected articles.

Source: Authors’ compilation based on literature search.

Figure 8. Focus of the reviewed studies.

Source: Authors’ compilation based on literature search.

Table 1. Profile of the studies included for systematic review

S. no	Source	Country	Study type	Focus of the study	Findings
1	Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier (2009)	Great Britain	Empirical	Intervening role of visual content for the tourist	Social media campaigns can be a formidable tool for increasing the interest of potential travellers. The research adds to and enriches our understanding of tourism experience mediation by assessing the role of technology, especially online communication media, in the pursuit of hedonism within tourism encounters.
2	Hair et al. (2010)	USA	Empirical	Features of relational activity within electronic community	Consumers frequently use online forums and social networking sites as a means of communicating and information sharing. Communities with more diverse content discussions corresponded to stronger relationships.
3	Freberg et al. (2011)	USA	Empirical	Public perception of social media influencers	Social media influencers are latest type of independent third-party endorser who wields the power of social web to sway an audience’s opinion.
4	Fotis et al. (2012)	Former Soviet Union	Empirical	Social media influence in pre-trip, in-between, and post-trip	There is a high association between perceived social media influence and alterations done in vacation planning before to final choice. User-generated content is considered to have a higher level of credibility than that which is promoted via official tourism websites, travel agents, or the mainstream media.
5	Hudson and Thal (2013)	USA	Research article	Consumer travel decision journey and social media engagement	The study reveals that most tourism businesses are not engaging with customers in a meaningful way through social media platforms. Rather than focusing on how to allocate investment across other traditional platforms, tourist marketers should consider the many stages of the decision journey.
6	Kang and Schuett (2013)	USA	Empirical	Travel experience sharing	The results endorsed a research model that anticipates how enjoyment, social media use for planning, and social media experiences would mediate the effect of internalisation, identification, and conformity on actual travel experience sharing behaviour. The significance of reported enjoyment as a result of social influence and a determinant of experiences on social media was also established, as was the importance of perceived usefulness as evaluated by social media use.
7	Jin and Phua (2014)	USA	Empirical	Effects of source credibility and engagement on the number of followers with a mediation of social identification	Consumers perceived celebrities with high followers’ ratio to be physically attractive, trustworthy, and credible. Consumers’ social identification with the celebrity only mediates positive brand tweets, not negative brand tweets.
8	Vázquez et al. (2014)	Spain	Analytical review	User-generated content and its implications on consumer decision-making journey	Tremendous increase in user-generated content also impacts traditional shopping behaviour. Customers have adopted different interaction channels such as microblogs and social networks, which allow them to discuss about their experiences with friends and acquaintances and to look for opinions voiced by complete strangers as part of their decision-making processes.
9	Ballantine and Au Yeung (2015)	New Zealand	Empirical	Impact of consumer-generated content and reviews on perceived credibility and behaviour intentions	According to the findings, balanced reviews are perceived to be the most credible. When people read bad reviews, they think less of the brand and are less likely to buy it, but when they read positive reviews, they think more of the brand and are more likely to buy it. However, no distinction was discovered between the effects of review valence.
10	Chen et al. (2015)	UK	Empirical	Influence of eWOM on consumer decision journey	The research work builds a conceptual framework that includes three e-WOM dimensions: (1) motivation, (2) source, and (3) content. The results indicate that images are a very influential factor in customers’ purchasing decisions, so the e-WOM definition should be expanded to incorporate them. This seems even more important now, when “a picture is worth a thousand words” and people take pictures of almost everything. This should be added to the existing e-WOM criteria.
11	Christou (2015)	Greece	Empirical	Characteristics of social media brand in travel industry	Trust in a travel social media brand is affected by brand attributes, organisational traits, and client characteristics. Therefore, tourism businesses should put effort into gaining consumers’ confidence in their social media brand. Trust amongst travellers can be built and maintained through a variety of means, but the social media presence of a brand is becoming increasingly important.
12	Kiráľová and Pavlíčeka (2015)	Czech Republic	Literature review	Role of social media strategies/campaigns in destination competitiveness	Social media assists destinations to stay competitive. Influencers should provide fascinating content, use inventiveness, and encourage interactive communication.
13	Liljander et al. (2015)	Finland	Empirical	Behaviour intention of young consumers in blog marketing	A consumer’s future interest in the blogger, their intent to spread the blogger’s content via word of mouth, and their intent to make a purchase were all negatively impacted by overt marketing. Whereas covert marketing had no effect on the desired behaviour. The blogger’s credibility was not influenced by either covert or overt marketing.
14	Carter (2016)	USA	Conceptual framework	Social influence on followers	While social metrics, such as an influencer follower’s ratio, continues an important indicator of influence, an influencer with lesser number followers but a bridge function across major communities could be extremely powerful.
15	Lemon and Verhoef (2016)	USA	Literature review	Customer decision making journey	Customers are exposed to various touchpoints as they progress through the customer journey to purchase, they make decisions about what to buy, how to order, and how to pay, each of which has direct and indirect consequences on purchase and other customer behaviours.
16	Kapitan and Silvera (2016)	New Zealand	Conceptual framework	Endorser effectiveness via focus factors	A consumer’s confidence on specific set of sources and characteristics of the message is the result of focal factors related to the consumer’s motivation and the environment in which the message is consumed. This paper constructs a coherent model of endorsement effectiveness based on correspondence bias by integrating theoretical components pertaining to match-up, attribution, consumer involvement, source attractiveness, meaning transfer, and deep versus superficial processing.
17	Djafarova, E., & Rushworth, C. (2017)	England	Empirical study	e-WOM and buying choices of young female Instagram users	Bloggers, YouTube stars, and “Instafamous” profiles are more influential than “real” celebrities because their audiences view them as more credible and can more easily relate to them. The research shows that young female Instagram users are heavily influenced by the purchasing decisions of Instagram celebrities. Women on Instagram are avid observers, and they gravitate toward accounts that regularly post attractive photos and positive feedback.
18	Lim et al. (2017)	Malaysia	Empirical	Social media influencers’ effectiveness, source credibility and attractiveness and meaning transfer using consumer attitude as a mediator	Information provided by the influencer is regarded as credible and has a significant impact on users’ perceptions, perspectives, and attitudes as well as purchase
19	Varkaris and Neuhofer (2017)	UK	Empirical	Social media influence on hotel decision-making on consumers	The study: 1. Bridges the gap between consumer behaviour, tourism, and social media literature in the hotel context, contributing to a further refined knowledge of the hotel- customer decision via social media. 2. It was discovered that social media has a considerable effect on consumers, with the level of influence varying between positive, negative, and non-existent content. 3. Demonstrates the impact of social media on different levels, that are visually demonstrated in a collection of real-life scenarios, demonstrating how social media affect consumer decision-making practically.
20	De Veirman et al. (2017)	USA	Empirical	Followers’ reactions to influencer marketing and their number of Instagram followers	The “followers/followees ratio” of an influencer is important because users may find them less appealing if they have a lot of followers but few followees. Collaboration with an influencer having high followers/followees ratio may not be the best option when developing an influencer marketing strategy to promote a variety of products because it may dilute the perceived uniqueness of the brand and, in turn, brand attitudes.
21	Magno and Cassia (2018)	Italy	Empirical	Trust-building effects of content produced by social media influencers	The study states that a follower’s perception of the blogger’s credibility and shared information quality significantly influence follower’s intention to accept the blogger’s travel ideas.
22	Tsay-Vogel et al. (2018)	USA	Empirical	Facebook users’ privacy perceptions and self-disclosure behaviours	This research implies that casual use of social media has little effect on people’s attitudes toward privacy. Nonetheless, privacy concerns amongst heavy users have consistently climbed to high levels in comparison to light users. Individuals with more permissive privacy attitudes are more likely to self-disclose globally. The study adds to the evidence that privacy attitudes, specifically threats to privacy and support for privacy measures, play an essential moderating role in the indirect impacts of face book use on self-disclosure.
23	Enke and Borchers (2019)	Germany	Conceptual framework	Production, sharing, interaction, and public presentation of content by social media influencers	Social media is an excellent instrument for the person who mounts a spectator in order to influence them. Furthermore, when they amass followers with similar interests, an influencer frequently gets access to potential followers that are more tough to reach to specialised audiences
24	Lou and Yuan (2019)	USA	Empirical	Impact of influencers’ generated content on their credibility and followers trust	The credibility of influencers effects negatively on consumers’ perceptions of brands and their propensity to make purchases. This can be understood as followers may have mixed feelings or suspicions about the influencers’ motivations, leading them to discredit influencers while taking consumption-related actions, even though the informative value of influencer-generated content generally carries over and influences followers’ trust in their branded posts.
25	Seeler, et al., (2019)	Germany and New Zealand	Empirical	Factors influencing experience accumulation	People can “experience the traveller’s life” thanks to social media. Without physically being present, one’s level of experience is based on a combination of one’s own personal lived experience and supplemental digital experiences, such as stories from other travellers. The findings of this study corroborate the notion that writing about one’s travels online increases their impact on memory, and they propose that deliberate reflection on accumulated experiences strengthens one’s sense of self as a seasoned traveller.
26	Campbell, C., & Farrell, J. R. (2020)	USA	Literature review	Influencer marketing and types of influencers and their functional components	Three important functional components namely: 1. Audience 2. Endorser 3. Social Media Manager: Marketing executives must examine the value influencers provide in terms of their different functionalities and explore how combining these functionalities may be more effective than traditional types of advertising.
27	Jaya and Prianthara (2020)	Indonesia	Empirical	The role of social media influencers on the perception of tourist destinations and purchase intention	According to the findings, the reputation of a destination, how well known a brand is, and the opinions of influential people on social media all have a major impact on tourists.
28	Lee, S., & Kim, E. (2020)	USA	Empirical	Influencer and brand credibility in relation to the efficacy of Instagram promotional posts made by influential individuals.	Quality, reputation, and dependability are the three pillars of brand image, and they show that tourists want to get what they paid for before, during, and after their trip.
29	Taillon et al. (2020)	USA	Empirical	Social media influencers’ relationships with their followers	Closeness moderates the effect of attractiveness on purchase intentions in a positive way. However, it does not have a significant effect on purchase intentions with similarity.
30	Wellman et al., (2020)	USA	Empirical	Authenticity of sponsored content	The findings imply that influencers’ ethical framework is based on being genuine to oneself (authenticity) and being true to one’s audience (credibility). Using these principles, influencers can boost their own brand awareness and audience engagement while also making use of resources aimed to assist commercial brands and tourist hotspots.
31	Anna Pop et al. (2021)	Romania	Empirical	The effect of trusted social media influencers on consumer travel decisions	The study reveals the significance of trust in social media influencers in the decision-making process, from initial interest in a trip to the final stages of researching available options, making a purchase, enjoying one’s stay, and telling others about it. Each phase of the customer journey mediates the effect of influencers trust on the subsequent phase, creating a seamless process where trust in influencers is evident at every stage. The study concludes that there is a positive correlation between consumers’ trust in influencers, their interest in travelling, and their information-seeking behaviours. Consumers who place a high level of trust in influencers and who are interested in travelling to a location advised by an influencer are more expected to look for information about the location on influencers post. As a result, the trust that consumers have in SMIs has an immediate and positive effect on the most important parts of the customer journey.
32	Gholamhosseinzadeh et al. (2021).	Japan	Empirical	Effect of interaction between travel vloggers and their followers on destination image	Influencers who are more liked are likely to obtain new followers since their present followers already have good views on their content
33	Han and Chen (2021)	USA	Empirical	Social media influencers’ credibility and tourists’ behaviour intention to travel	This study lends credence to the application of source credibility theory on the attitudes of Millennial Social Media Users, particularly in the tourist context by finding a positive correlation between the credibility of social media influencers as a source and Millennial Social Media Users’ perspective on influencer marketing, Further, the connections between followers of social media influencers and those who don’t follow them are more stable.
34	Kim and Kim (2021)	USA	Empirical	Influencer marketing and followers’ trust building	The results shed light on the persuasive processes that occur in influencer-follower relationships and have implications for the strategic application of influencer marketing.
35	Leite & Baptista, (2022)	USA	Empirical	The impact of engagement with social media influencers on purchase intent.	A great number of social media users have become famous on the internet, as evidenced by their large number of followers, by creating profiles that are both interesting and engaging.
36	Purwandari et al. (2022)	Indonesia	Empirical	Effect of influencers– followers interaction on intention to follow travel recommendations	The findings indicate that information and homophile experiences positively effects pleasure, excitement, and dominance. Pleasure and dominance influence commitment, and commitment influences the intention to follow the recommendation.

Source: Authors’ compilation.

Figure 9. Proposed conceptual model.

Source: Authors’ contribution.

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