A Study On The Participation Motivation And Influencing Factors Of Members' Participation Intention In Virtual Tourism Community

With the development of Internet information technology and the increasing personalized demand of tourism,a new kind of tourism online social networking platform——virtual tourism community is gradually rising and becoming more and more mature.Virtual tourism community,which serves as a tourist information collection,information exchange and interaction social platform,attracted much attention of the participants of tourism related industries and tourism researchers.Virtual tourism community brings a broader platform to future tourism network marketing and tourism e-commerce.The main purpose of this paper is to explore which factors will affect the participation intention of virtual community members.Meanwhile,the antecedents of these factors are also explained since different motivations and sense of quality will have different affects on these influencing factors.The research will enrich the application of sense of community theory and theory of planned behavior in virtual tourism community.At the same time,it has a very important significance for online travel operators to maintain and improve customer relationship and to win the competitive advantage of network marketing.Based on literature study,this paper comes up with the definition of virtual tourism community members' participation ? participation intention and participation motivation.Secondly,the application of attitude?perceived behavioral control and sense of community on members' participation intention in virtual tourism community are studied.Thirdly,the influences of different motivations and sense of quality on these influencing factors are studied.Based on the related research models,this paper tries to construct the influencing model of virtual tourism community members' participation intention.The paper has the following hypothesis: instrumental motivation,social-recreational motivation,expectancy motivation have significant and positive influence on attitude;instrumental motivation,social-recreational motivation,expectancy motivation and sense of community quality have significant and positive influence on perceived behavioral control;social-recreational motivation and sense of community quality have significant and positive influence on sense of community;attitude,perceived behavioral control and sense of community all havesignificant and positive influence on participation intention.The data was collected through a survey of 583 members from five famous virtual social network(Mafengwo ? Mofang ? Baidu Travel ? Qyer and Guzhou 1778 Outdoor Travel Community)to test the proposed theoretical model.This paper uses SPSS and Structural equation model.Through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis,the paper tests the definition of each measurement index.And through correlation analysis and model test,the effects of individual participation motivation and sense of community quality on members' participation intention are studied.The main findings of the empirical study are showed as follows:(1)instrumental motivation and social-recreational motivation have significant and positive influence on attitude;instrumental motivation,social-recreational motivation and sense of community quality have significant and positive influence on perceived behavioral control;expectancy motivation is not statistically related to attitude and perceived behavioral control.(2)social-recreational motivation and sense of community quality have significant and positive influence on sense of community.(3)attitude,perceived behavioral control and sense of community all have significant and positive influence on participation intention.