Veni, vidi, vici: The impact of social media on virtual acculturation in tourism context

Chunqing Li, Shuojia Guo, ChengLu Wang and Jieli Zhang

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2019, vol. 145, issue C, 513-522

Abstract: This study aims to explore how social media usage can be leveraged to help tourists cope with acculturation when traveling aboard. Specifically, based on the findings of content analysis of the case company's chronicle posting on social media and in-depth interviews with its reviewers, we propose a theoretical process model to elucidate the major roles of social media in influencing the tourists' “virtual” acculturation process: an information source for destination selection, a learning center for cultural related skills for sociological adaptation, and a buffer of social support for psychological adjustment. This study contributes to the acculturation literature by extending the concept of “acculturation” to include indirect and intermittent “virtual” intercultural contacts and investigating the roles of social media in the various stages of virtual acculturation process. Additionally, it also enriches social media research in tourism literature as extant studies have mainly focused on social media application in destination branding. The implications of our findings will help tourism managers optimize their social media marketing efforts towards better trip experience with more positive acculturation outcome.

Keywords: Virtual acculturation; Social media; Social contact; Social learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162517316104
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:145:y:2019:i:c:p:513-522

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2019.01.013

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().