Sharing Internship Experience on the Internet: A Study of Tourism and Hotel Management College Students

1. Sharing Internship Experience on the Internet:
A Study of Tourism and Hotel Management
College Students
Lawrence FONG1, Hee Andy LEE2, Chris LUK1,
Daniel LEUNG3, & Rob LAW1
School of Hotel & Tourism Management,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
2
School of Tourism,
The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
3
Department of Tourism and Service Management,
MODUL University Vienna, Austria
1
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 1

2. Agenda
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Methods
• Results
• Discussions
• Conclusions
• Q&A
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 2

3. Introduction
• Background
– Internet is a major vehicle for information dissemination
– Online media (e.g., Facebook, Internet forum, etc.) allow
information disseminated to family members, friends,
acquaintances, and strangers
– Likelihood of using various kinds of online media to
disseminate information may vary
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 3

4. Introduction
• Background
– Understanding online sharing of personal experience is of
great interest among researchers
– No study on college students' internship experience sharing
behaviour on the Internet
– Internship officers need to know where the interns share
experience, for improvement of internship program
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 4

5. Introduction
• Objectives
– To compare tourism and hotel management college
students' likelihood of sharing internship experience on
different online media
– To investigate whether the likelihood of sharing internship
experience on these online media varies with gender and
Internet usage
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 5

6. Literature Review
• Online Information Dissemination Media
– Given the wide variety of online media, an understanding of the
common characteristics of these media is necessary
– Online-personal media: the online information dissemination
media that receivers are known to the senders (e.g., emails,
social networking sites, etc.)
– Online-collective media: the online information dissemination
media that receivers are unknown to the senders (e.g., Internet
forums, weblogs, etc.)
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 6

7. Literature Review
• Social ties & Information dissemination
– Social ties: social relationship between the sender and
receiver (Brown & Reingen, 1987)
• Strong ties (e.g., close friends and family members)
• Weak ties (e.g., acquaintances and strangers)
– Strong ties: characterised by individuals with similar
attributes
– Weak ties: characterised by heterophilous individuals
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 7

8. Literature Review
• ... continued
– Self-categorisation theory: consider belonging to a group
and emphasize the similarities among in-group members
and distinctions from out-group members (Turner et al.,
– 1987) of information should be more likely inside the
Sharing
group, characterising by strong ties and homophilous
members (Lai & Wong, 2002)
– H1: Online-personal media are more likely to be used by
tourism and hotel management college students to share
internship experience than online-collective media
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 8

9. Literature Review
• Gender & Online Information Dissemination
– Gender moderates decision making (Kim et al., 2007)
– Gender effect on online behaviour is inconclusive (Akman &
Mishra, 2010; Thayer & Sukanya, 2006; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007)
– Females have more strong tie networks (Ibarra, 1997)
– Females use the Internet to maintain existing
relationships, but males use Internet for developing new
relationships (Sheldon, 2008)
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 9

10. Literature Review
• ... continued
– H2: When sharing internship experience, female tourism
and hotel management college students are more likely to
use online-personal media than their male counterparts
– H3: When sharing internship experience, male tourism
and hotel management college students are more likely
to use online-collective media than their female
counterparts
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 10

11. Literature Review
• Internet Usage & Online Information
Dissemination
– High Internet usage leads to more online communications
(Thayer & Sukanya, 2006)
– When sharing internship experience, tourism and hotel
management college students with high Internet usage
are more likely to use (H4: online-personal, H5: onlinecollective) media than their low Internet usage
counterparts
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 11

12. Hypotheses
• H1: Online-personal > Online-collective
• H2: Females > Males on Online-personal
• H3: Males > Females on Online-collective
• H4: High usage > Low usage on Online-personal
• H5: High usage > Low usage on Online-collective
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 12

13. Methods
• Participants:
– Hotel & tourism management students in a Hong Kong
University
• Online survey
• 52 completed questionnaires:
– Likelihood of using the two online media (7-point scale)
– Gender and Internet usage (20 hours or below / Above 20
hours) (Assael, 2005)
– No non-response bias based on Mann-Whitney Tests
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 13

14. Results
• H1: Online-personal > Online-collective - Confirmed
Wilcoxon Signed Rank test (n = 51)
Personal - M (Mdn)
Collective - M (Mdn)
Z-value
4.98 (5.00)
4.31 (5.00)
-3.03**
• H2: Females > Males on Online-personal - No difference
• H3: Males > Females on Online-collective - Confirmed
Mann-Whitney Test – Exact Test Method
Male (n = 8)
Female (n = 41)
Z-value
Personal: M (Mdn)
4.88 (5.00)
4.95 (5.00)
-.17
Collective: M (Mdn)
5.25 (5.50)
4.12 (4.00)
-1.93*
Notes. ** p < .01; * p < .05
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 14

15. Results
• H4: High usage > Low usage on Online-personal - No
difference
• H5: High usage > Low usage on Online-collective - No
difference
Mann-Whitney Test – Exact Test Method
High (n = 29)
Low (n = 22)
Z-value
Personal: M (Mdn)
5.21 (5.00)
4.68 (5.00)
-1.28
Collective: M (Mdn)
4.28 (5.00)
4.36 (4.00)
-.09
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 15

16. Discussions
• Online-personal > Online-collective
– Share with strong ties members
– Share with homophilous members (e.g., classmates)
– Asians’ collectivism may enhance support of in-group
interest (Triandis et al., 1988; Wagner III, 1995)
• Female = Male on Online-personal
– Concur with no gender effect on online-communication
(Teo & Lim, 2000; Thayer & Sukanya, 2006; Valkenburg & Peter,
2007)
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 16

17. Discussions
• Male > Female on Online-collective
– Males like to develop new relationship online (Sheldon,
2008)
– Lower risk-taking propensity of females (Byrnes et al., 1999)
may hinder their willingness to share with strangers
• High usage = Low usage on both Online Media
– Internet usage and familiarity are unable to explain online
information sharing
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 17

18. Conclusions
• Strength of social ties is of concern in
internship experience sharing
• Internship officers and industry practitioners
connect to students via social networking
sites prior to the commencement of
internship
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 18

19. Conclusions
• Limitations
– Data collection in one school limits generalisability
– Small sample size & low response rate
– Uneven mixture of male and female respondents
• Future Studies
– Examining the influences of social ties, homophily, and selfcategorisation on the use of online media for sharing
– Replicating the study in a context other than internship
experience sharing
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 19

20. Thank You!
Q&A
ENTER 2014 Research Track
Slide Number 20