ENTER2020 eTourism Conference presentation

1. Social Media-Induced Tourism:
A Conceptual Framework
Seunghun Shina and Zheng Xianga
a,b Howard Feiertag Department of Hospitality & Tourism Management,
Pamplin College of Business
Virginia Tech, USA
{ssh15, philxz}@vt.edu

2. Outline
• Introduction
• Social Media-Induced Tourism: Three Major Aspects
• Experience Aspect
• Socio-Technical Aspect
• User Aspect
• Conclusion
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3. Introduction
Research Background, Motivations, and Goals
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4. Definition
• A phenomenon in which originally unpopular places turn into popular
destinations due to posts uploaded on social media. It occurs when individuals
are induced to visit what they see in posts on social media (Shin & Xiang, 2020).
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“A few years ago, one or two hikers a day
would visit Delta Lake. Now, over 145
people are hiking there each day.”
“It will be closing indefinitely due to
fallout from its unexpected popularity on
social media.”
Holson, L. M. (2018, November 29). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/travel/instagram-geotagging-environment.html.
Marcus, L. (2019). CNN Travel. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/mclaughlin-daffodil-hill-california-closed-instagram/index.html.

5. Economic and Social Impacts of SMIT
• From tourism marketer’s point of view
• Increasing impacts of social media on traveler’s behavior (Miller, 2017)
• Numerous occurrences of SMIT (Marcus, 2019)
• Increasing tourism marketer’s investment in social media (Black, 2019)
• From DMO’s point of view
• Accompanied by critical social issues (Lowry, 2019; McLaughlin, 2019)
• Travelers: Risk of an accident due to a lack of infrastructure
• Locals: Tax increases to develop the infrastructure
• Places: Temporarily or permanently closed / Environmental degradation
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6. Research Motivations & Goals
• Motivations: Lack of formal discussion about SMIT
• New type of tourism
• Ever-increasing roles of social media in hospitality and tourism
• Socio-economic impacts of SMIT (e.g., Overtourism) (Alonso-Almeida et al., 2019)
• Goals: Developing a conceptual framework of SMIT
• Developing a framework to describe and explain SMIT
• Proposing possible research questions to serve as a starting point for the theoretical
development of SMIT
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7. Social Media-Induced Tourism: Three Major Aspects
Experience, Socio-Technical, and User Aspect
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8. Impacts of Social Media
• Social movements (Xiong et al., 2019)
• Politics (Lotan et al., 2011)
• News sharing (Xiao, Noro, & Tokuda, 2014)
• Entertainment (Highfield, Harrington, & Bruns, 2013)
• Consumer behavior (e.g., shopping) (Chu & Choi, 2011; Chu & Kim, 2011)
• Depression / Body image of young adults (Fardouly, 2015; Lin et al., 2016)
• Eating habits of individuals (Vaterlaus et al., 2015)
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9. Media-Induced Tourism
• Movie-induced tourism (Hudson & Ritchie, 2006; Riley et al., 1998)
• TV-induced tourism (Connell, 2005; Kim, 2012; Su et al., 2011)
• Major research topics: Mechanism and impacts
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Experience Media Content Viewer

10. Social Media-Induced Tourism
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RepresentationExperiences Dissemination Tourism
Social
Media
Mass
Media
• Expert-generated
• One-way & linear
dissemination
• User-generated
• Network-based
communication
• Ad hoc publics
• Following
behavior
• More organic
• Time-sensitive
Social
Media
Mass
Media
• Becoming part of
a story
• More scripted

11. Three Major Aspects of SMIT
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• Different domains of knowledge as foundations for understanding the impacts of
social media in the hospitality and tourism literature.
• Experience aspect (Prentice et al., 1998; Wang & Fensenmaier, 2013)
• Socio-technical aspect (Djossa, 2019; Xiang et al., 2017)
• User aspect (Gretzel, 2017)
Experience UserSocio-Technical

12. Experience Aspect
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• Definition: Subjects of social media content in the tourism context
• Types of travel experiences
• Spatially and temporally interconnected (Gretzel et al., 2006)
• Psychological and emotional states involved (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1981)
• Socially and culturally created (Larsen, 2007)
• Becoming more complex because of IT and social media
• Searching experience (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010)
• Post-trip experience (Kim & Fensenmaier, 2017)
• Movie-induced tourism: Which location becomes focal point of traveler’s visit?

13. Socio-Technical Aspect
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• Definition: Socio-technical features or functions of social media
• Likes, Comments, and Shares: Virality (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011)
• Leading to offline behavior (Beukeboom et al., 2015)
• Ending up an online fad (Alhabash et al., 2015)
• Hashtags and Geotags
• Hashtags: Developing networks of people “bound by their being interested in the same content and wishing
to read and share information about it” (Caleffi, 2015, p. 46)
• #ENTER2020 #TravelGuildford
• Geotags: Telling travelers where to go for actualizing the inducement (Djossa, 2019)
• Platform characteristics
• Differences in the main mechanism of each platform
• Differences in the reason for using (Rauschnabel et al., 2019)
• Differences in the user base and usage behavior (Phua et al., 2017; Xiang et al., 2017)

14. User Aspect
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• Definition: Social media users
• Digital / Smart tourist (Gretzel et al., 2015)
• Dual roles: Creators and consumers (Cox et al., 2009)
• Influencers (Sigala & Gretzel, 2017)
• Users as content consumers
• Characteristics of media-induced tourists (Singh & Best, 2004)
• Demographic (Amaro et al., 2016)
• Socio-psychological
• Open to experience (Yoo & Gretzel, 2011)
• Emotionally sensitive (Correa et al., 2010)
• High risk-taking (Parra-lópez et al., 2011)
• Users as content creators
• Social media influencers (Coffey, 2019; Ong & Ito, 2019)
• Quality content vs. Trustworthiness (De Veirman et al., 2017)

15. Conclusion
Possible Research Questions
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16. Possible Research Questions
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How can something happens in social media lead to actual activities in real-world?
• Experience aspect
• What types of experiences are likely associated with SMIT?
• Interaction between aspects
• How are different aspects integrated in terms of SMIT?
• User aspect
• Who are social media-induced tourists?
• Why are influencers influential in SMIT?
• Socio-technical aspect
• How does a viral effect develop into SMIT?
• How do geotags and hashtags contribute to SMIT?
• How can SMIT be differently understood in each platform?

17. Thank you!
Seunghun Shina and Zheng Xianga
a,b Howard Feiertag Department of Hospitality & Tourism Management,
Pamplin College of Business
Virginia Tech, USA
{ssh15, philxz}@vt.edu