旅游者生成内容特征对旅游意向的影响——社会比较情绪的链式中介效应

The Effect of Tourist-generated Content Characteristics on Travel Intention:The Chain Mediation of Social Comparison Emotions

当前,“晒景点、晒美食、晒坐标”等旅游消费分享行为成为日常,旅游者生成内容的特征也开始被学术界关注,但已有研究较少涉及旅游者生成内容影响消费行为的过程机制。为此,该研究基于社会影响理论和社会比较理论,分析旅游者生成内容的特征对旅游意向的影响,并检验旅游妒忌和相对剥夺感作为中介变量的过程机制,结果显示:(1)旅游者生成内容的感知有用性正向预测旅游意向,感知炫耀性对旅游意向无显著预测作用;(2)相对剥夺感在感知有用性和旅游妒忌之间起负向中介作用,在感知炫耀性和旅游妒忌之间起正向中介作用;(3)相对剥夺感和旅游妒忌在感知有用性-旅游意向和感知炫耀性-旅游意向两组关系中无链式效应。研究丰富了旅游者生成内容研究领域的情绪结果,并为社交媒体时代旅游者分享的健康营销提供了新路径。

With the development of Internet technology,tourists’traveling experiences sharing on social media,which is also called tourist-generated content(TGC),has gradually become an important part of information sharing.According to previous research,the tourist-generated content has the following connotation:(1)The main body of poster is tourists;(2)The generated content includes travel events,experience,and feelings,which belongs to amateur creation;(3)The sharing carrier is a virtual community or platform.In academic circles,the characteristic of tourist-generated content has also become a hot topic in tourism academic research and industry practice,but the existing researches are less concerned with the process mechanism of tourist-generated content affecting consumption behavior.Furthermore,as an internal factor affecting consumer behavior on social media,emotion was often used to explain the impact process of user generated content.A large number of scholars have studied the emotion triggered by user generated content,among them,envy caused by social comparison has become a research focus,but the relative deprivation as the antecedent of envy has not attach much attention.Different from envy with automatic and unconscious characteristics,relative deprivation has the coexistence of cognition and emotion,and individuals are obviously aware of the injustice.It can be seen that travel envy and relative deprivation may be mediation variables between tourist-generated content and travel intention,but less direct evidence.Therefore,based on the social influence theory and social comparison theory,this study analyzed the influence of the TGC characteristics on the tourist intention,and examined the process mechanism of travel and relative deprivation as mediating variables.This study adopted an online random sampling method to collect data through Credamo platform,and finally obtained 557 valid data.Next,this study used SPSS 22.0software for descriptive statistical analysis,and the partial least squares structural equation model(PLSSEM)was calculated using Smart-PLS software to test the serial multiple mediation.The results of measurement model showed that the reliability and validity of the constructs,such as variance inflation factor,Cronbach’sα,composite reliability,Fornell-Larcker value,and HTMT value,were attain to the standard.The results of structural model and mediation effect test showed that:(1)Perceived usefulness positively predicts travel intention,while perceived conspicuousness has no significant predictive effect on travel intention;(2)Relative deprivation plays a negative mediating role between perceived usefulness and travel envy,while it plays a positive mediating role between perceived conspicuousness and travel envy;(3)Relative deprivation and travel envy have no chain effect in the relationship between perceived usefulness,perceived conspicuousness and travel intention.This study has the following implications.From the theoretical level,the findings enrich the research framework and empirical findings of tourist-generated content in tourism,providing a new insight for tourists’cognition,emotion and behavior in the digital media era.From the practical level,this study provides theoretical guidance to promote tourists’decision-making and word-of-mouth marketing for social media tourism.Most importantly,our research could improve digital health and happiness in the era of“we media”.