Studying the effective factors on domestic tourists trust in offering e-services in e-tourism: Case study Iran Country

Abstract

The number of users of computer as well as online international communication networks is growing increasingly and utilization of the modern communication technology has become the integral part of life at present. Although the World Wide Web has been established many years ago, considering it logically demonstrates that just in recent years such virtual world has influenced various parts of people's life and most industries have become dependent on it. One of the industries on which the virtual world has recently had many effects and has been led to its prosperity is the tourism industry. Tourism and information and communications technology known as ICT are very popular nowadays and have a superior status among experts of different techniques and sciences. ICT is indeed a modern and emerging technology through which humans intend to take a big step in different sciences in the new century. Fortunately, the value and importance created by the modern information and communications technology for development of tourism substructures in the world are very interesting, so that many advanced countries have developed their tourism industry via this modern technology. A simple instance in this regard is the virtual tourism through which tourism has been grown in the above countries several times their previous statistics. This is while Iran not only has demonstrated its remarks by means of a slogan in this regard, but by losing the opportunities it regrets those countries which convert the threats faced by the tourism industry into opportunity through creating artificial tourist attractions. It is noteworthy that Iran has special climatic situation as well as the intact nature. E-tourism is a turning point between tourism and information technology and both phenomena are the most basic productive activities for job opportunities in the world. Tourism has been divided into different types and information technology is effective in tourism development via various activities. E-tourism is a tool for information fulfillment about tourism attractions, the possibility to offer online services, saving time and cost saving, providing the necessary arrangements for simple decision-making of tourists in choosing target tourism destinations and establishment of comprehensive information systems of tourism institutions, facilities and routes. Currently, many tourism companies utilize websites as a marketing mechanism for selling of their products and services. The present study has been conducted to investigate the effective factors on trust, loyalty and satisfaction of e-tourists with offering eservices in Iran. To this end, a model was used to investigate the relationship among variables such as perceived security, perceived privacy, simple payment methods, navigation functionality and transaction cost with intermediate variables (trust and satisfaction) and loyalty as the dependent variable. Thus, one-hundred eighty web-based questionnaires were distributed among online users. The obtained results showed that perceived security has the highest effect and transaction cost has the lowest effect on online users' trust in using e-tourism services. The findings indicated that satisfaction has a positive effect on customer trust and loyalty and plays a key role in on-line services of tourism products and services. Researchers in the field of tourism industry development can use the findings of the present study. Also, these findings can be helpful for managers and policy-makers in tourism prosperity, enhancement of substructures and other effective factors on prosperity of this industry.