Study On The Mechanisim How Social Network Influences New Generation College Students' Travel Willingness

With the prosperity of WEB2.0, social network has brought amazing changes for society. Tourism is gradually associated with social network. Social network makes it easier for tourists to search more useful and reliable information; social network is more effective because of lower searching cost; meanwhile, social network can attract new generation especially college students to involve due to its accessibility and ease of use. As a result, it is important to study how social network influence tourists' behavior especially new generation's travel intention. It will contribute to a new markeing model that tourism companies can make use of to attract more potential customers.This study bases on the theory of customer perceived value and technology acceptance model. According to the theories, we conclude three demensions of customer perceived value in social network: perceived outcome value, procedure value and psychological value, which are regarded as mediating variables in this study. Consequently, we adopt survey as research method. Four dimensions of social media attributes are the independent variables, three dimensions of perceived value are the mediating variables and new generation's travel intention is the dependent variable.AMOS22.0 and structural equation model are used to study how the features of social network make a difference on new generation's perceived value and thereby influence their travel willingness. Study suggests that: 1.Community conversation of social network positively and significantly influences perceived psychological value; information interaction positively and significantly affects perceived outcome value; openness positively and significantly affects perceived procedure value; friendliness positively and significantly affects perceived procedure value. 2. Community conversation, information interaction, openness and friendliness are all positively and significantly affect new generation's travel intention. 3. Mediating effect of perceived value exists siginificantly.This study will contribute to both theoretical creativity and practical application. In this research we combine social network and tourism industry and it is a new topic in tourism management. The connection of technology acceptance theory and customer perceived value theory which helps to propose a new division of customer perceived value. And the study selects college students as sample and it provides tourism companies with marketing strategy on new generation.