The Influential Elements Of The Effort Of College Students Search For On-line Travel Information

Research of tourists’information search behavior is one of the most important researches in the realm of tourists’behavior study. Tourists’decision is crucial to the whole travel activity, while the decision is mostly based on the information that tourists have gathered. Therefore, tourists’information search behavior significantly influences the decision.Nowadays, the Internet is becoming one of the most important information sources that tourists use. Researching into tourists’search behavior will benefit on-line travel information providers.In existing researches of tourists’information search behavior, most researchers have followed the theory of consumer information search behavior or model; have not fully taken tourists’characteristics into consideration. Researches of tourists’on-line information search behavior are also lacking currently. The impact or role of the Internet or network as a particular search method has also been ignored.Based on existing researches, this paper carried out the model of the influential elements of the effort of tourists’behavior of searching for on-line travel information. Those elements not only include tourist’s personal characteristics and external factors, but also include the network impact.In this paper, focusing on the college students as the target of object of empirical research, the author analyzed those influential elements of their search behavior and tries to provide reasonable suggestions to on-line travel information’s providers.According to the empirical research, the author amended the former model into the final model as the result of this research. In the final model, the effort of tourists’search for on-line travel information is positively related with tourists’ prior experience and knowledge, involvement, perceived risk, perceived income, search skill, time availability, numbers of on-line travel information resource type, and the easy operation of web interface; and negatively related with economic cost of search. The on-line travel information search effort of tourists with different educational level and different travel form is various. Nevertheless, tourists’travel purpose, team composition, and the amount of on-line information that the Internet provides are all not significant related with the effort.Based on the research result and the final model, the author offered several suggestions to the on-line travel information provider.