The impact of the uses and gratifications of tourist attraction fan page
Abstract
Purpose
The fan page of social network site can be used as a platform for the tourist attractions to interact with their consumers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how entertainment, informativeness, and socializing gratifications affect a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction fan page in the context of smart tourism, on which scant research has been conducted so far.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors investigate how entertainment, information, and socialization gratifications affect a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction fan page of Hong Kong youth in the context of smart tourism using structural equation modeling.
Findings
The authors show that three aspects of gratifications, i.e., entertainment, informativeness, and socializing, have significant impacts on a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction fan page, which subsequently has an impact on intention to visit the attraction through a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction developed through his/her attitude toward a fan page.
Originality/value
Scant research has been conducted to study how uses and gratifications affect a user’s attitude toward a tourist attraction fan page in the context of smart tourism. This research fills this research gap.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China (Project No. G-YBLR). The authors would like to thank Ms Wai Sim Chow for her assistance in developing the website and data collection for this project.
Citation
Ho, K.K.W. and See-To, E.W.K. (2018), "The impact of the uses and gratifications of tourist attraction fan page", Internet Research, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 587-603. https://doi.org/10.1108/IntR-04-2017-0175
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited