Millennials’ interactions with social media content on cruise tourism
Abstract
Purpose
The cruise industry has used technology to attract more millennials than ever before. The progression of social media has transformed the way young individuals gather information for their travel decision-making. Hence, this study aims to investigate the effects of the characteristics of social media – Instagram – on millennials’ trust in and attitudes toward social media content and their behavioral intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
A self-administered survey was designed to test the study model, and 323 responses collected were deemed valid for main data analysis.
Findings
The results revealed that perceived enjoyment of content is a powerful antecedent of trust, attitudes and behavioral intentions. Content quality is a strong predictor of trust but has no meaningful effect on attitudes and behavioral intentions.
Originality/value
Theoretically, this study contributes to the research in the tourism literature on social media and cruise marketing based on integrating into the technology acceptance model, the characteristics of social media content and trust based on commitment-trust theory. This study can help cruise operators use Instagram to influence millennials and suggests significant implications based on social media interactions with millennials.
Keywords
- Cruise tourism
- Characteristics of Instagram content
- Trust
- Extended technology acceptance model
- Millennials’ behavioral intentions
- 邮轮旅游、Instagram 内容特征、信任、扩展技术接受模型、千禧一代行为意向
- Turismo de cruceros
- Características del contenido de Instagram
- Confianza
- Modelo de Aceptación de la Tecnología ampliado
- Intenciones de comportamiento de los millennials
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the initial assistance provided by the SIT Hospitality Program graduates (Koh Shemin, Kuek Tee Tiong, Soh Wan Rong, Tan Shui Ting Amelia and Woo Gui Luan) in facilitating data collection and contributing to idea generation for this research.
Author contributions: Bona Kim – Corresponding Author, Conception or design of the work, Data collection, Data analysis and interpretation, Drafting the article, Final approval of the version to be published.
Sut Ieng Lei, Drafting the article, Critical revision of the article, Final approval of the version to be published.
Citation
Kim, B. and Lei, S.I. (2024), "Millennials’ interactions with social media content on cruise tourism", Tourism Review, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-08-2023-0582
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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