Research On The Formation Mechanism Of User Engagement Behavior In Online Tourism Community

With the continuous development of the mobile Internet and the emergence of social platforms,people's behavioral habits and consumption patterns are also changing subtly.People are transformed from passive information recipients to information creators,which brings new opportunity to the development of online travel communities.Furthermore,with the booming tourism market,online travel communities have penetrated into every aspect of consumers' travel process.Besides,user engagement behaviors(e.g.,likes,sharing,and comments)play an important role for the sustainable development and ultimately success in the field of online travel communities.Hence,it is necessary to explore the user engagement behavior formation mechanism in online travel communities.In addition,empirical research that investigates which posting-related attributes driving these engagement behaviors still lags,and no research to our knowledge has investigated and compared the differences of these posting-related attributes in driving the different forms and intensity of engagement behaviors within online communities.Based on S-O-R framework,the purpose of this study is to build an econometric model(seeming unrelated regression estimation)from three perspectives of information,source and receivers to understand what and how posting-related attributes drive the engagement behaviors.Besides,this study compares the differential effectiveness of these posting-related attributes in affecting the three different forms and intensities of engagement behaviors(consuming,contributing and creating engagement behavior).This thesis validates the proposed model by using the real-world data collected from the largest travel social media platform in China,Mafengwo.cn.In total,this thesis collected 33,801 travelogues for 30 worldwide destinations.The results reveal that five attributes including information vividness,travelogue's length,the expertise of a contributor,the degree centrality of a contributor and the average prior comment length are positively associated with these engagement behaviors(i.e.,consuming,contributing,and creating).According to dominance analysis,the source-level attributes is the most important factor for contributing and creating engagement behaviors,while,the elapsed time is the most important factor for consuming engagement behavior.What's more,these attributes demonstrate the differential effectiveness on the engagement behaviors with different intensities.Specifically,according to coefficient difference test,posting-related attributes exhibit the maximum influence on the contributing engagement behaviors,the moderate effect on creating engagement behaviors,and the minimum impact on consuming engagement behaviors.Besides,compared with information and receiver attributes,the source-level attributes consisting of expertise and the degree centrality of a contributor consistently exhibit greatest influence on the three engagement behaviors.Our empirical research provides new knowledge information for further understanding of the formation mechanism of engagement behaviors in the context of online travel community.Besides,this study supplements and improves the cognitive system of user engagement behaviors with different intensities in online travel communities.What's more,considering the differences of different engagement behaviors,this paper can provide more targeted and differentiated operational strategies for online community operators to build a vibrant and successful online community.At the same time,this thesis points out the limitations of this study and the prospects for future research.