Abstract
Purpose: The fan page of social network site can be used as a platform for the tourist attractions to interact with their consumers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how entertainment, informativeness, and socializing gratifications affect a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction fan page in the context of smart tourism, on which scant research has been conducted so far. Design/methodology/approach: The authors investigate how entertainment, information, and socialization gratifications affect a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction fan page of Hong Kong youth in the context of smart tourism using structural equation modeling. Findings: The authors show that three aspects of gratifications, i.e., entertainment, informativeness, and socializing, have significant impacts on a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction fan page, which subsequently has an impact on intention to visit the attraction through a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction developed through his/her attitude toward a fan page. Originality/value: Scant research has been conducted to study how uses and gratifications affect a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction fan page in the context of smart tourism. This research fills this research gap.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 587-603 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Internet Research |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Funding
The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China (Project No. G-YBLR). The authors would like to thank Ms Wai Sim Chow for her assistance in developing the website and data collection for this project.
Keywords
- Fan pages
- Smart tourism
- Social network sites (SNS)
- The uses and gratifications theory (UGT)