Social media have been deemed as more and more critical to modern travel consumers. These consumers often regard social media as trustworthy source that can lower the perceived risk and uncertainty throughout their travel. Though previous studies revealed that travel consumers’ participation in social media could be explained by their functional, social-psychological and hedonic needs, the factors that impact their behavioral intentions, such as purchase intention, WOM intention, and attitudes of destination brands have not been well studied. By conducting a two-phase study on Chinese travel consumers (nposts =65; nratings=1668), we found that both the UGC features (credibility and interestingness) and the social media engagement of travel consumers (comment, retweet, like) can impact their behavioral intentions. In addition, compared to the credibility of a post, the interestingness could more positively influence the social media engagement of travel consumers. Our study gives a better understanding of connections between social media and the travel consumers’ behavioral intentions.
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