Likes—The key to my happiness: The moderating effect of social influence on travel experience

Abstract

Please cite this article as: D. Sedera, S. Lokuge, M. Atapattu, U. Gretzel, Likesmdashthe key to my happiness: The moderating effect of social influence on travel experience, Information and Management (2017), http://dx.A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 2 Likes-the key to my happiness: The moderating effect of social influence on travel experienceA c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 3 that 52% of travelers changed their original travel plans as a result of comments received through social media [21]. Further, shared information about travel experiences has become an important source that influences the decisions of potential holidaymakers. According to "The Australia.com" Facebook survey, 72% participants used Facebook for seeking "holiday inspirations," and 82% of them were inspired to visit Australia through Facebook.Furthermore, the study found that 70% travelers update their Facebook status while on vacation, seeking acknowledgments from their friends and family [21].The social influence asserted through Facebook before and after the travel provides the context to this study. Herein, it is argued that an individual is subjected to social influence prior to travel when s/he receives feedback through comments or likes 1 of about the travel.This influences the traveler's expectations of the destination, places of travel, time of travel, and/or the mode of travel. Similarly, a traveler's post-travel experience is influenced by the comments s/he receives for their postings such as photographs and status updates made during the travels. As such, this study employs the expectation confirmation theory (ECT) to investigate how social media asserts social influence on the traveler's expectations and postexperience. Following Miller [22], it is argued that each traveler will develop preconsumption expectations and the relationship between expectations (i.e., pre-travel) and confirmation can be moderated by social influence. Similarly, it is logical to argue that their satisfaction (i.e., post-travel) is just as fluid and moderated by social influence.This research is designed to answer the following research questions: "Does social influence moderate the relationship between pre-travel expectations and confirmation?" and "Does social influence moderate the relationship between confirmation and post-travel satisfaction?" The scope of the study provides both researchers and practitioners an opportunity to observe the important role of social influence as a moderator.The two research questions required a longitudinal study to gauge the moderating effect of social influence on (i) the relationship between expectations and confirmation and (ii) the relationship between confirmation and satisfaction in the ECT [23][24][25]. It is noted that most ECT and social influence studies are simply cross-sectional, and the present study is one of the very few studies to recognize the impact of time lag between variables longitudinally using the same respondents before and after a leisure tour. M a n u s c r i p t 30 Darshana SederaDar...

Exploring the Boundary Conditions of Social Influence for Social Media Research

“…Thus, it is evident that research in SNS has covered a broad spectrum of theories and concepts related to social influence when understanding the user behaviours in the digital sphere. Overall, social influence studies in information systems employ constructs like, compliance, identification, internalization, peer influence, informational influence and normative influence as the key variables (Bagozzi and Dholakia 2002;Kuan et al 2014;Sedera et al 2017;Zhang et al 2018).…”

“…The objective of the literature analyses was (i) to develop an understanding of the utility of the two streams of studies, (ii) to identify the constructs of social influence and (iii) propose boundary conditions necessary. Conducting a literature analysis was decided as the most appropriate for the study since the authors identified that even though theories of social influence have been widely utilized in the domain of information systems, (Bagozzi and Dholakia 2002;Kuan et al 2014;Sedera et al 2017;Vannoy and Palvia 2010), up to date, a comprehensive literature analysis on this topic has not been conducted. In the meantime, a literature analysis would lay a strong foundation to facilitate future research that would employ social influence constructs to examine social interactions in SNS.…”

“…According to the latest statistics, in 2018, the global population using SNS reached 3.196 billion, with an annual increase of 13% (Chaffey 2018). The proliferation of SNS like Facebook and Twitter also has been acknowledged in the academic literature for exerting influence on the individual and the society (Kane et al 2014;Oh et al 2017;Sedera et al 2017;Sedera et al 2016). Sinha and Fung (2018) argue that individuals can be treated as 'micro-influencers.'…”

“…With the advent and mass proliferation of SNS, researchers agree that social influence is growing and changing (Bagozzi and Dholakia 2002). Researchers of various disciplines have contributed through a wealth of studies to better understand the social influence that occur as a result of people's interactions in SNS, including information systems (Alarifi et al 2015;Sedera et al 2017), marketing (Dholakia et al 2004;Sedera et al 2017), organizational environment (Arvidsson and Holmström 2013) and political science (Tufekci and Wilson 2012). Moreover, the impact of SNS has been discussed in various sectors, including automobile (Wang et al 2015), music (Dewan et al 2017), and film industry (Oh et al 2017).…”

Influence of Social Broadcasting Networks on News Consumption

“…Literature on IT post-adoptive behaviour postulate that during a period of utilitarian or functional technology use, individuals engaging in the reflective use of technology trigger "technology sense making" (Jasperson et al 2005, p. 544). This is based on how individuals use the technology's attributes or features rather than their own habitual use of the technology (Bhattacherjee 2001;Jasperson et al 2005;Sedera et al 2017). Post adoptive behaviours leading to future use of IT are also derived from self-orchestrated learning experiences.…”