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

Highlights

• 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.

Abstract

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.

Introduction

The touristic activities that mainly supported by smart technologies are known as smart tourism in this era (Gretzel et al., 2015c). Some authors considered smart tourism as the convergence of information technology (IT) and tourism experience (Hunter et al., 2015) and is particularly an important direction for the future development of tourism as a whole (Gretzel et al., 2015a). Apart from helping practitioners to better manage their tourism products and services offering, smart tourism is able to enhance travellers’ tourism experience too (Marchiori and Cantoni, 2015). While smart tourism carries a larger scope and has wider coverage (Gretzel et al., 2015b, Marchiori and Cantoni, 2015), it is an undeniable fact that the use of smart technologies in touristic activities forms part and parcel of smart tourism. The term smart technologies describes new technologies that are multi-functional and possess high connectivity level. Among examples include smartphones and smart television (Gretzel et al., 2015b). Marchiori and Cantoni (2015) observed that smartphones resemble the key devices in smart tourism, and serve as an enabler for travellers to access, share and publish user-generated contents (UGC) to other travellers, anytime and anywhere.

Owing to the proliferation of smart mobile devices (m-devices) and mobile social media apps, travellers are beginning to consume and create smart experiences pertaining to their travel experiences (Lyu, 2016), and these UGC published on social media serve as an important reference for other travellers (Marchiori and Cantoni, 2015, Mendes Filho et al., 2012). The rapid growth of mobile technologies, particularly smartphones, have implications among travellers while they are moving (Gretzel et al., 2015a). Oum and Han (2011) explained that UGC refers to the contents (either created or copied) published by digital commons for public distribution, instead of web publishers. Digital commons on the other hand refers to collaborative activities on the read-write web, such as blogs and wikis (Moreillon et al., 2009). The emergence of social networking and community websites has promoted the growth of UGC (Jin et al., 2015, Qi et al., 2014), and with mobile technologies facilitating the interaction of members in the mobile communities (Tschersich et al., 2011). Further it was also discovered that mobile communities have significantly improved the interactions among travellers (Schmidt-Rauch and Schwabe, 2014), and UGC has emerged as the cornerstones for virtual communities (Zhao et al., 2012). Foursquare is considered as one of the leaders in mobile community, and it allows users to link their updates with Facebook and Twitter (PR Newswire, 2010). Moreover, it is also good to point out that the willingness for travellers to share their travel data is the backbone of smart tourism (Gretzel et al., 2015b), and the data produced in social media by travellers constitute an essential part in smart tourism (Marchiori and Cantoni, 2015).

Researches on smart tourism are scarce, either conceptually or empirically (Gretzel et al., 2015a). Given the fact that governments are aggressively promoting smart tourism, especially in Asian countries (Gretzel et al., 2015b), it is crucial to look into this particular discipline in Asian context. On one hand, Gretzel et al. (2015b) posited that privacy is a major concern among tourists under smart tourism, and they urged researches on information privacy concern to be conducted from the view point of smart tourism. It should also be noted that privacy concern has been regarded as an inhibitor of online content creation (Yoo and Gretzel, 2011), which clearly suggests that UGC creation is endangered by travellers’ privacy concerns, and this could ultimately hinder the development of smart tourism. Concurrently, Lee and Phang (2015), together with Hew (2017), realized that mobile social media and privacy concern are two emerging issues in Asian region that deserve investigations. Hence, it is worthwhile to study on the negative influence of privacy concern on continuance intention to crate travel-related UGC in this study. On the other hand, from the point of view provided by Chou et al. (2016), the unwillingness of participants in virtual community to participate and contribute knowledge contents has failed many virtual communities. Tilly et al. (2015) agreed and noted that only minority of the travellers are willing to create UGC, despite that many of them are using social media. It is therefore argued that the unwillingness to create UGC is a fatal cause of virtual communities, which include online travel communities. Hence, the sustainability of smart tourism is threatened. For such reason, apart from personal privacy concern, it is equally vital to discover the personal motivations for travellers to create UGC. Furthermore, this move receives support from Munar and Jacobsen (2014), who suggested that the possible influences of personal motivations in tourism experiences sharing are worth exploring at this point of time.

In view of the proposed calls made by scholars and the substantial importance bought by both UGC and mobile technologies to travellers and in particularly smart tourism (Gretzel et al., 2015a, Gretzel et al., 2015b, Marchiori and Cantoni, 2015), this study proposes to study the inhibitor roles played by privacy concern on travellers’ continuance intention to create travel-related UGC in travel and tourism related mobile social media sites. In addition, the study also seeks to understand the personal motivations behind continuance intention to create UGC, from the perspectives of sense of belonging and personal motivations. Other than explaining personal motivations in creating UGC through self-determination theory (SDT), this study employs sense of belonging, which has been regarded as a personal motivator for online travel community members to share knowledge (Munar and Jacobsen, 2014, Qu and Lee, 2011). As such, it is believed that the research model could deliver better explanation on the travellers’ continuance intention to create travel-related UGC in travel and tourism related mobile social media sites, from the perspectives of personal inhibitor and motivators.

There are a few researches that focused on social media and UGC in the tourism industry. Munar and Jacobsen (2014) tried to explore the motivation for creating UGC in tourism context; while Xiang and Gretzel (2010) investigated the role played by social media in online travel information search. Notwithstanding that researches on social networks and UGC in tourism industry are common (Hvass and Munar, 2012), the novelty of this study lies in its focus on explaining continuance intention to create UGC under mobile social tourism context through an integrated model that combines SDT, privacy concern, and sense of belonging. Moreover, in consideration that the access to social media has gone mobile, and the impacts of social media and UGC in tourism industry (Bowen and Baloglu, 2015, Xiang and Gretzel, 2010), this study is expected to contribute relevant and latest knowledge to tourism practitioners, such as hoteliers and restaurants, pertaining to travellers’ intention to create UGC under mobile environment.