Impact of social media posts on travelers’ attitudes and behaviors towards a destination after a natural disaster: moderating role of the source of the post

Abstract

This study, taking Jiuzhaigou as an example, analyzes the impacts of social media posts after a natural disaster on potential visitors’ perceptions and their willingness to visit a destination. Utilizing a multi-method approach, this study first content analyzes the social media posts about the 7.0 magnitude earthquake and reactions to those posts to identify the impacts of those posts on public sentiment. Then, an experimental study is conducted to identify the significant differences in the impacts of social media posts by the official destination social media accounts and by individuals on two dimensions of public sentiment and the mediating role each public sentiment dimension plays in the effects of social media posts on visit intentions. Significant differences are found in the content and form of social media posts coming from different sources. Compared with social medial posts from the official destination accounts, posts from individuals have significantly higher impacts on willingness to visit a destination after a disaster. The loss perception and sense of loss are the key psychological factors that affect willingness to visit after a disaster. These two factors also play full mediating roles in the relationship between social media posts from individuals and the willingness to visit the destination after the earthquake.

Keywords:

• Natural disaster
• sense of loss
• partial presentation
• public sentiment
• intention of visit

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the “2020 Central University Education and Teaching Reform Project” of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (No.2020YJG021)

Notes on contributors

Jin Ai

Dr. Jin Ai is an Associate Professor in the Tourism Department of School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. Jin has conducted many tourism projects in China, for their planning, developing, and upgrading works, and he also works as tourism adviser for many regional governments of China. Dr. Ai's research interests focuses on tourism planning, tourist behaviors and destination development.

Xingyang Lv

Dr. Xingyang Lv is an Associate Professor in School of Business Administration at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China. Dr. Lv's research interest focuses on tourism marketing, destination marketing and tourist behavior.

Dogan Gursoy

Dogan Gursoy is the Taco Bell Distinguished Professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management at Washington State University (Pullman WA 99164-4736, USA. Email) and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg. His area of research includes services management, hospitality and tourism marketing, tourist behavior, travelers' information search behavior, community support for tourism development, cross-cultural studies, consumer behavior, involvement, generational leadership and artificial intelligence device use in service delivery.