Generating travel-related contents through mobile social tourism: Does privacy paradox persist?

•Mobile social tourism, a new term that fits into smart tourism, has been proposed.•Privacy concern does not stop travellers from generating travel-related contents.•Sense of belonging and perceived benefits fully mediate the influence of privacy concern.•The privacy paradox has been reaffirmed in the context of mobile social tourism. In view that smart tourism is a neglected research area and privacy concern is a prevalent issue that deserves spotlight in smart tourism research, this study seeks to explain continuance intention to create user-generated contents among travellers within the mobile social tourism context through an integrated framework that consists of privacy concern, sense of belonging, and self-determination theory. Mobile social tourism, which refers to the use of mobile social media in tourism activities, is a newly proposed term that fits into the scope of smart tourism in this study. PLS-SEM has been employed to analyse the data collected through self-administered questionnaires. Most structural paths in the framework are consistent with past literatures, except for the negative influences of privacy concern. The mediation analysis suggests that these effects have been neutralized by perceived benefits and sense of belonging, which reaffirms the “privacy paradox” phenomenon in smart tourism research. Overall, the framework could provide adequate explanation towards continuance intention to create user-generated contents under the context of mobile social tourism. Both theoretical and practical implications are then discussed.