| Information seeking plays an essential role in consumers’decision-making and product-purchasing, which is also one of the important contents of consumer behavior research. From the80’s of the last century, tourism information demand, information seeking strategies and the influencing factors have been studied by scholars both at home and abroad based on consumer behavior, psychology, economics, intelligence and so on. And certain achievements have been made. With the rapid development of the internet and China’s tourism, online tourism research has become a new hot topic. Domestic scholars have paid close attention to tourism electronic commerce and tourism network marketing. But the researches about online tourism information demand and seeking behavior, especially the interaction process research from the perspectives of tourist and network, are still rare. And the inherent nature and law of online information seeking behavior is also seldom discussed. Scholars usually adopt the single research methods such as questionnaire and interview.The online tourism information seeking is a complicated cognitive process and behavior because of the complexity of online environment and the particularity of tourism activities, which, therefore, needs to be studied systematically from various perspectives and using different methods. This paper studies the online tourism information seeking behavior and its inner influencing mechanism based on the Genetic from the aspects of tourists and information network. The experimental observation, questionnaire, depth-interview and other methods are employed in order to do a comprehensive interdisciplinary multi-angle research.All the work of this research is supported by the grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO.41001077). With tourists as a special consumer group being the research object, the author of this paper analyzes the online information demand and constructs an influencing online tourism information seeking model that reveals the influence mechanism based on Information Seeking Theory, Complex Network Theory, Plan Behavior Theory, Consumer Behavior Theory and Information Science. The researching results have certain theoretical significance for enriching tourism information science and developing consumer behavior science. From the practical value, the research also helps tourist sites and enterprises to construct online tourism information system and carry out corresponding precision marketing. The main work and conclusions are as follows.(1) A framework of online tourism information seeking behavior is constructed based on the Genetic. The paper firstly clarifies such concepts as the tourism information needs, tourism information desire, tourism information demand and tourism information seeking behavior, and then analyzes the logic level among them according to the framework.(2) It analyzes the online tourism information demand by using factor analysis and text analysis, and proposes the Structure Level Mode of Online Tourism Information Demand. The online tourism information demand can be classified into core demand, supportable demand and auxiliary demand, which are obviously different from each other.(3) It discusses tourists’information seeking process of starting, searching, browsing, assessing, tracking, extracting and storing based on Ellis’Activity Feature Model and Kuhlthau’s ISP model, combining the investigation questionnaire data and experimental data. It proposes the online tourism information seeking process model (OTISP) and further analyzes the information seeking process of different groups.(4) It studies the station transfer and choice behavior of online seeking. Under the guidance of complex network theory and information foraging theory, it analyzes the complex network structure features including degree distribution, node centricity, network diameter and average path length, clustering coefficient and network elastic. ⅡTM transfer mode based on the process and SFM transfer mode based on web function are proposed. It also sums up keywords query mode and the index sequence effect of inquiry results.(5) It analyzes the influence mechanism of online tourism information seeking behavior and constructs the interpretation model based on Theory Reasoned Action and Technology Acceptance Model. The paper finds that the degree of tourism involved and the search motivation related with tourism information impact positively on the intention of seeking behavior. However personal characteristics, network skills, destination distance and other information search motivation have little effect.The intention results in different degrees of seeking, ranging from seeking of core information, seeking of supportable information to seeking of auxiliary information in turn. This dissertation attempts to make innovations in the following areas:(1)In research methods, the paper adopts multi-methods such as experimental observation (screen tracking), questionnaire investigation, complex network and network data mining. In particular, the experimental observation method adopted in the paper reflects intuitively the demand of online tourism information and trajectory of seeking behavior. This method makes up for the shortage of the traditional questionnaire method.(2) Based on the Genetic theory, the paper constructs the genetic model of online tourism information need--seeking behavior, and then proposes the structure level mode of online tourism information demand. It clarifies some basic concepts and analyzes the logic relationship among the information need, information demand, information desire and online tourism information demand.(3) From the seeking process perspective, the paper proposes the model of online tourism information seeking process (OTISP) based on Ellis’Activity Feature Model and Kuhlthau’s ISP Model. Viewing from the seeking transfer, the research found that the characteristic of station transfer is distinctive, which is the field website connected transfer Mode driven by Search Engine.The paper puts forward and verifies the interpretation model of online tourism information seeking behavior, and basically clarifies its influencing mechanism. The degree of tourism involved and information seeking motivation are the key factors that lead to the seeking intention. There exists a gradient connection between behavioral intention and seeking behavior. |
PDF Full Text Request