A Study on the Tourism-Related Information Consumption Process of Tourists on Social Networking Sites

The current study was conducted to examine the consumption process of tourists through the SIPS model as they experienced tourism-related information and products on social networking sites. Data was collected online from Koreans who have experience in using social networking sites, and a total of 479 responses were used for the data analysis. The statistical package for social sciences 23 and analysis of moment structures 23 were used to evaluate stability, consistency for the measurement items, and to perform structural equation modeling to test hypotheses. There were three main results that emerged from the study. First, three dimensions of sympathy (emotional sympathy, content sympathy, and sympathy for situations and publishers) were extracted. Second, among the dimensions of sympathy, only “content sympathy” showed a significant impact on identification while all dimensions of sympathy significantly affected tourism participation intention. It indicated that tourists are willing to participate in tourism activities immediately if they sympathize with the information obtained from social media without going through the identification process, which is the opposite result of what the SIPS model argued. Lastly, travel content production experience has been shown to have a moderating effect in the relationship between identification and tourism participation intention. The current study will contribute to understanding tourists’ consumption process of tourism-related information on social networking sites and to establish efficient marketing strategies.