The power of gossip: contextual talk in tourism communication

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the role of individuals’ accidental, contextual talking – rather than planned, goal-oriented conversation – about tourism to illuminate its influences on touristic motivation and communicative behaviors. Contextual talking in daily life can trigger internalized and situational motivation toward information behaviors regarding tourist concern. Two comparative studies were conducted to provide a causal account of touristic information behavior in the U.S. and China. The studies’ results suggest the role of contextual talking in triggering situational motivation, which explains the substantial variance of communicative actions regarding tourist destinations. Moreover, an alternative model was specified and tested; this model proposes that tourist concern still functions as a significant predictor of active communication. This study discusses the implications of the role of contextual talk and its domino effect.

KEYWORDS:

• Communicative action
• contextual talking
• information forwarding
• information seeking
• situational motivation
• situational theory of problem solving
• tourist concern

Highlights

• Contextual talking highlights non-goal-oriented communication about tourism.

• Contextual talking triggers to ‘stop to think’ about tourism problems.

• Contextual talking leads to communicative behaviors about tourism.

• Empirical studies conducted in the U.S. and China support the models.