Berhanu Kassegn, Raj Sahil
Debre Berhan University, Department of Tourism Management, North Shoa, Ethiopia.
School of Management Studies, Punjabi University, Patiala, India.
Heliyon. 2020 Mar 10;6(3):e03439. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03439. eCollection 2020 Mar.
Credibility of social media travel information sources is one of the most debatable topics among scholars. This research is designed to address the trustworthiness of travel and tourism information sources of social media platforms. Cross-sectional research design and convenience sampling was applied. Statistical Package for Social Science version 23 was employed to compute mean, one sample T-test, independent sample T-test and one-way Analysis of variance. Eta squared was calculated to measure the effect size or magnitude of mean difference. The effective sample size is 310 visitors. The findings revealed that visitors had a positive perception towards the trustworthiness of social media travel information sources. Visitors with the age of 18-35 years have a higher level of agreement towards the trustworthiness of social media travel information sources. As the age of visitors increases, the mean scores marginally decreases where the lowest mean scores lay on visitors who are above 46 years. Limitations and managerial/industrial implications are detailed.
社交媒体旅游信息来源的可信度是学者们最具争议的话题之一。本研究旨在探讨社交媒体平台旅游信息来源的可信度。采用了横断面研究设计和便利抽样方法。使用社会科学统计软件包第23版来计算均值、单样本T检验、独立样本T检验和单因素方差分析。计算了 eta 平方来衡量均值差异的效应大小或幅度。有效样本量为310名游客。研究结果表明,游客对社交媒体旅游信息来源的可信度持积极看法。年龄在18 - 35岁之间的游客对社交媒体旅游信息来源的可信度认同度更高。随着游客年龄的增加,平均得分略有下降,其中平均得分最低的是46岁以上的游客。详细阐述了研究的局限性以及管理/行业启示。