Trust perceptions of online travel information by different content creators: Some social and legal implications

Abstract

Consumers are increasingly turning to the online environment to provide information to assist them in making purchase decisions related to travel products. They often rely on travel recommendations from different sources, such as sellers, independent experts and, increasingly, other consumers. A new type of online content, user-generated content (UGC), provides a number of legal and social challenges to providers and users of that content, especially in relation to areas such as defamation, misrepresentation and social embarrassment. This paper reports research that examined the level of trustworthiness of online travel information from these different sources. The study used a survey of Australian travel consumers (n=12,000) and results support the notion that there are differences in the level of trust for online travel information from different sources. Respondents 'tended to agree' that they trusted information provided by travel agents, information from commercial operators and comments made by travellers on third party websites. However, the highest level of trust was afforded to information provided on State government tourism websites. These results suggest that greater trust is placed in online travel comments when they are on a specific travel website than when they are on a more generic social networking website. However, respondents were 'not sure' that they trusted comments made by travellers on weblogs and on social networking sites. Some 88% of respondents that had not visited UGC websites (or were unsure if they had) indicated that they thought that UGC would be useful in the future -suggesting that they feel that any concerns they may have in relation to legal and social problems resulting from its use will be resolved.

Explaining travellers online information satisfaction: A complexity theory approach on information needs, barriers, sources and personal characteristics

“…Trust plays an influential role in information source selection for travellers, although findings are mixed in terms of the degree of trustworthiness for available information sources and their effects on information satisfaction. Specifically, there are concerns about the credibility of information provided by websites that provide user-generated content, such as reviews because of the anonymity and questionable motives of information providers, which could result in posts of fake or biased reviews [49,50]; however, online customer reviews are considered, in principle, more reliable and truthful as an information source compared to information provided by company websites [15]. Nevertheless, such websites, although more trustworthy, have been reported to be less informative compared to editorial content providers [51].…”

“…The previous section provided indicative examples pertaining to the applicability of different information sources to satisfy different information needs. Moreover, personal or contextual factors, such as age, gender and trust predisposition towards an information source, may influence the selection of sources and, ultimately, the degree of accumulated information satisfaction [15,16,20,25,30,37,65]. It should be noted that these complex interactions between the information-seeking behaviour components and their combined influence to information satisfaction may not be examined through the employment of traditional variance-based analysis methods, such as regression analysis and structural equation modelling.…”

“…For example, individuals searching online for logistics-related destination information, such as hotels and restaurants, may visit online social networks or online travel guides to collect A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 7 information and satisfy these information needs [14,28]. However, trust perceptions regarding the credibility of online information may guide them either to prefer a particular information source compared to another [15,52] or to influence the accumulated information satisfaction from the information search process [66].…”

“…In effect, the online information-seeking process of travellers is rather complex; travellers are motivated to select and use multiple online information sources based on inherent travel-related information needs that relate to the vacation planning decision-making [14]. In this process, several factors intervene, such as trust on the accumulated information from the online information source [15] and personal elements (e.g. age, gender and online information literacy capacities [16][17][18]), which impact the selection of information sources and the overall satisfaction of information needs.…”

“…Scholars have recognized the importance of both trust perceptions on the quality/reliability of travel information that is published on the Internet [52], especially for information posted on online social networks [15,53], and of personal characteristics (i.e. gender, age and information literacy [16,68]) on the selection and usage intensity of online information sources.…”