What drives travelers' adoption of user-generated content? A literature review

Abstract

User-generated content (UGC) has become an important part of travel planning, as travelers evaluate travel products based on past reviews. However, different factors account for why tourists utilize UGC. The aim of this study is to review extant studies on UGC to identify the antecedents of UGC utilization for travel planning and the theories, models, and frameworks used in these studies. A total of 54 studies from 2005 to 2016 were found. This study found that UGC adoption is determined by attributes relating to the user, the source, the content, and response variables. It also found distinct and heterogeneous theories and frameworks mainly drawn from the information systems, socio-psychology, and management disciplines. Among the antecedents, the average path coefficients of the extracted relationships show that trust predicted attitude more than the other variables. Implications and future research directions are provided.

Reviewing the Past to Inform the Future: A Literature Review of Social Media in Tourism

“…Leung et al, (2013) also discovered that there had been only ten full-length articles published from 2007 to 2009 (two, three, and five, respectively). The recent literature review on travellers' adoption of user-generated (Ukpabi & Karjaluoto, 2018). On the contrary, Chen & Law (2016), in providing an overview of eWOM in hospitality and tourism, found seven journal papers published between 2008 and 2010 (one, two, and four, respectively).…”

“…Sotiriadis (2017) identified antecedents of review use, the influence of online reviews on consumer behaviour, and the impact of these reviews on tourism businesses as the major themes. Ukpabi & Karjaluoto (2018) also found out that a majority of research studies focused on Facebook and TripAdvisor rather than other platforms such as YouTube. The uniformity of the research is further underlined by most publications relying on theories derived from the fields of information systems, social psychology, and management (Ukpabi & Karjaluoto, 2018).…”

“…Ukpabi & Karjaluoto (2018) also found out that a majority of research studies focused on Facebook and TripAdvisor rather than other platforms such as YouTube. The uniformity of the research is further underlined by most publications relying on theories derived from the fields of information systems, social psychology, and management (Ukpabi & Karjaluoto, 2018). The research presented in this paper builds on these existing review studies and further extends them by exploring additional structural and content-related properties of relevant publications in the field of tourism-related social media research.…”

“…This has resulted in a number of social media in tourism-related review studies. Scholars have usually reviewed publications from both consumer and provider perspectives (e.g., Lu et al, 2018;Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014) with few adopting a consumer-centric view (e.g., Ukpabi & Karjaluoto, 2018). A consumer-centric view emphasizes social media as cardinal platforms for the tourists to search for information, engage in trip planning, or share contents and differs significantly from the provider perspective, which deals with exploiting social media for market intelligence and marketing communications purposes.…”

From Blockbuster to Neighbourhood Buster: The Effect of Films on Barcelona

“…This traveller-generated content (TGC) about destinations and their services has become an important source of information for travellers [81] that is used to evaluate their search for information and their behaviour during the trip, describing travellers' perceptions and the way in which they refer to the value of the information associated with the websites of the destinations [82]. Online Travel Reviews (OTRs) currently account for most TGC and have great academic value as a data source [83,84] regarding the analysis of perceived images; in particular, reviews taken from popular platforms such as TripAdvisor [85].…”