Research On The Influence Factrors Of Tourists' Electronic Word Of Mouth Platform Selection Behavior

Since China's reform and opening up,the Party Central Committee and the State Council have attached great importance to the development of tourism industry.Our country has achieved a historic leap from a tourism shortage country to a major tourism country.At the same time,the influence of tourism in the international community is becoming more and more significant.Today,the tourism industry has transformed from niche tourism to mass tourism,which has become a rigid demand for the people's happy life.In the environment of huge tourism demand,the tourism industry is developing rapidly,accordingliy the tourism products and services are daily up-graded.With the rapid development of information technology,various online travel platforms and websites have emerged,providing a sufficient display platform for travel products and services.The online travel platform not only provides tourists with a wealth of travel products and services,but also provides tourists with a huge amount of travel information.In particular,electronic word-of-mouth(e-WOM)information has now become an important reference for tourists' travel decisions,reducing the risk of tourists' decision-making.Researches have shown that the e-WOM information provided by tourists with relevant travel products and services consumption experience is more reliable than the information provided by travel service agencies.The e-WOM information has an impact that cannot be ignored on tourists,which is specifically manifested in the level of tourism willingness,destination selection,impression and trust of the destination,and destination behavior decision-making.In addition,the rapid development of different types of online travel platforms is gradually changing the spread of tourism e-WOM.On these platforms,tourists can not only browse the e-WOM published by others,but also participate in the process of e-WOM publishing.On the one hand,those online plaforms provide tourists with products and services.On the other hand,they supply score and evaluation functions.Some platforms even design special discussion communities,which greatly facilitates the spread of tourism e-WOM.Existing researches mainly explore the impact of tourism e-WOM on the tourism industry,including tourism decision-making,purchase intention,destination image and destination selection,etc.However,few studies have focused on tourists' e-WOM publishing behavior,especially on different types of platforms.However,understanding tourists'e-WOM publishing behaviors on different types of platforms is crucial to the marketing management of tourist destinations and e-WOM platforms.In order to make up for the deficiencies of previous studies,this research focuses on the core issue of "tourists' e-WOM behavior" based on the tourism background,and exploring tourists' selection of different types of platforms.As the research objects,this article selected two types of e-WOM platforms,integrated tourism websites and social media platforms.Our data set includes tourists' e-WOM on different types of platforms,interviews records and questionnaires.This article adopted the broaden-and-build theory,dramaturgical theory,task-technology fit theory and stimulate-organism-response theory as the theoretical basis,and comprehensively useed the methods of text analysis,face to face interview and statistical analysis to explore the influence factor of tourists' selection behavior on different types of e-WOM platforms.This article first adopted the method of text analysis to analyze the emotional differences,thematic differences and content differences of e-WOM on these two platforms,and explored the objective distribution rules of e-WOM to provide inspiration for following studies.Subsequently,this article useed questionnaire survey and face to face interview method to explore the influence of tourists' emotional changes,platform features,and tourism experience on tourists' selection of e-WOM platforms.The main research results of this article are as follows:Firstly,this article focused on the differences in e-WOM between integrated tourism websites and social media platforms,and compared the objective distribution rules of e-WOM on different e-WOM platforms from the three dimensions,emotion,theme,and content,which providing references for the follow-up contents.This research first used Python to write crawlers to obtain tourists' e-WOM data from the two platforms.Subsequently,the collected data is preprocessed to remove the noise information to ensure the accuracy of text analysis.Then this article uses sentiment analysis,LDA theme analysis and qualitative content analysis to analyze the collected e-WOM data.From following three dimensions,emotion,theme and content,we compared the e-WOM differences on the two e-WOM platforms.In the end,we summarized the objective distribution rules of e-WOM on different e-WOM platforms.The study found that:(1)Whether it is integrated tourism website or social media platform,the e-WOM emotion distribution is always positive greater than negative.(2)The e-WOM on the social media platform is more positive than those on the integrated tourism website.The results of sentiment analysis show that when the emotional score is higher(that is,when it is more positive),e-WOM tends to be classified into social media platforms,othervise,it is classified into integrated tourism websites.(3)Tourists tend to express emotional feelings,experience evaluation and cultural related topics on social media platforms,but share information related to destinations through integrated tourism websites,including topics towards cities,attractions,architecture,nature,local residents,travel companions,and etc.Secondly,based on the broaden-and-build theory,we explore the influence of tourists' emotions during travel on their selection of e-WOM platform.Through the questionnaire survey,we investigated tourists'emotional changes at different travel stages,especially in different travel scenarios.The relationship between tourists' emotional tendencies and the select of e-WOM platform is explored via association rules.The first study of this article has found the differences of e-WOM on integrated tourism websites and social media platforms through text analysis.However,the reasons why those differences formed remain to be explored.Therefore,we used the method of association rules analysis to explore the relationship between tourists' emotions and e-WOM platform selection behaviors.In the second study,the broaden-and-build theory was utilized.We divided the tourists' travel into planning stage,on-to stage,destination stage and back-to stage.Through empirical research methods,we used the modified Differential Emotion Scale(mDES)to measure the emotional states of tourists in various scenes,including taking transportation,living in hotel,and enjoying scenic spots and dining in restaurant.Meanwhile,we investigated tourists'e-WOM behaviors and platform selection behaviors on integrated tourism websites and social media platforms.Finally,we used SPSS and Rapidminer to conduct statistical analysis and association rules analysis to explore the influence of tourists' emotions on their e-WOM platform selection behavior.The research found that:(1)Tourists' emotion in a journey is ever changing,which means their feelings vary with the changing of travel stages.Besides,tourists' positive emotion average value in a journey is higher than negative emotional average value,which indicates that tourists are positve in most situations.Meanwhile,we found that tourists are most negative in the scene of hotel living.(2)There are significant differences in the emotions of different groups of tourists.We found that male gains higher score than female in negative emotion.In some ways,it's even higher than their positive emotions.Furthermore,we found that those ages between 18 and 29 are most positive.(3)We have found two strong association rules in the emotional tendency and platforms.The first one is that tourists with positive emotional tendency tend to publish e-WOM on social media platforms.Yet tourists with negative emotional tendency tend to publish e-WOM on the tourism integrated websites.Thirdly,through face to face interviews,we sorted out the e-WOM of tourists in different emotional states,as well as their cognition of different platforms' features.Then we analyzed the influence of platform features on tourists' selection of e-WOM platform from the fit degree of e-WOM motivation and platform features.In addition to tourists" emotional states,the different features of e-WOM platforms can fit the inherent needs of tourists from different degree,which will also affect tourists' selection of e-WOM platform.Based on the task technology fit theory,this paper regards the tourists' e-WOM motivation as task needs,and explores the influence of platform features.Specifically,we interviewed 30 interviewees face-to-face.Two interviewers rigorously coded the textual materials transcribed from the interview.The study combed the emotional changes of tourists during travel,and refined the e-WOM motivation of tourists in different emotional states.In addition,it distinguishes the differences in tourists' perceptions of the two platforms' features.Finally,we analyzed tourists'selection on different e-WOM platforms based on the fit degree of tourists'e-WOM motivation and platform features.The research results help better understand the psychology and behavior of tourists,and have implications on platform management.The research found that:(1)In positive emotional states,tourists' eWOM motivations include sharing experience,building self-image,socializing,recording life,expressing emotions and helping others.By contrast,in negative emotional states,tourists' eWOM motivations include blowing off steam,seeking revenge,reminding others and seeking help.(2)Integrated tourism websites and social media platforms differ in platform features.The results show that the social media platform can better meet tourists' positive e-WOM motivation,while the integrated tourism website can better fit tourists' negative e-WOM motivation.Compared to social media platforms,integrated tourism websites feature richer information(informativity),better communication accessibility(communication accessibility)and more convenient acquisition of tourism service and service information(service pertinence).By contrast,social media platforms feature more active social interactions(sociability),richer emotional information(emotionality)and more authentic information(authenticity).(3)Futhermore,this article analyzed tourists' publication of e-WOM at different stages.A minority of interviewees said they would publish e-WOM prior to traveling so as to announce schedules and seek help.A majority of interviewees said they would choose to publish e-WOM during traveling or on the way back.This is because their emotions are the most genuine during traveling whereas their travel experience is more complete on the way back.Finally,based on the strategic experiential module,we constructed a theoretical model of tourism experience's impacts on tourists' internal response and e-WOM behavior.Specifically,we verified the influence of sense experience,think experience,act experience,and relate experience on tourists' selection of e-WOM platforms.Studies have shown that the tourism experience will significantly affect the behavior of tourists.When the destination makes tourists feel happy,angry,disappointed,etc,tourists have a strong willingness to publish e-WOM.Based on Schmitt's strategic experiential module,this article proposed research hypotheses about the influence of sense,think,act and relate experience on tourists' internal psychological response and e-WOM behavior.We designed questionnaires based on existing scales,and distributed the questionnaires through online and offline channels.After excluding invalid questionnaires,the structural equation test is carried out through the SPSS AMOS 24.0 to verify the effect of different tourism experiences on tourists' e-WOM platform selection behavior.The research found that:(1)The sense,think and act experience have a significant positive impact on tourists' positive emotions and attitude towards the destination,but negative impact on the negative emotions.While the relate experience can positively influence the negative emotions of tourists,which is inconsistent with our expectations(H1d,H2d).(2)The positive and negative emotions of the tourists both have a significant role in promoting tourists'e-WOM intention.That is,the greater the emotion arouses,the more inclined for tourists to publish e-WOM.In addition,positive and negative emotions significantly affect tourists' e-WOM platform selection behavior.(3)Tourists'attitudes towards destinations have a significant positive impact on their e-WOM intentions,while the influence of e-WOM platform selection behavior is not significant(p>0.05).(4)Positive emotions will positively influence tourists' attitudes towards destinations,but negative emotions influence it negatively.The innovation of this paper mainly includes the following four aspects:Firstly,this paper combined a variety of research methods,such as sentiment analysis,theme analysis,content analysis,to explore the objective laws of the e-WOM content on different types of platforms.The combination of multiple analysis methods can make up for the shortcomings of each single method to some extent.Secondly,through association rules analysis,this paper creatively excavated the relationship between tourists' emotion and their selection of e-WOM platform.The research extends the previous research on the influence of emotion on behavior intention to specific behavior,which provides enlightenment for the follow-up research on tourists' emotion.Thirdly,based on task-technology fit theory,this paper innovatively analyzed the fit relationship between platform features and tourists' e-WOM motivation.It makes up for the deficiency of previous research on the fit degree of technology and task.Finally,this paper applied the previous strategic experiential module in the field of marketing to the field of tourism,which enriches the application situation of the theory.Different from previous studies,which discussed tourism experience as a whole,this paper explored the impact of tourism experience on tourists' e-WOM behavior from multiple experience dimensions,which provides inspiration for tourism research area.