Exploring Consumer Intention to Visit a Destination and eWOM through Uses and Gratification Perspective: Evidence from YouTube Travel Vlogs

Abstract

Consumers are motivated to utilize certain media in order to meet their needs. Drawing on the uses and gratification (U&G) perspective, this study aims to investigate how information seeking and entertainment factors influence consumer motivations to watch travel videos on YouTube. By investigating why consumers watch travel vlogs on YouTube, this study also investigates its emotional impact on customer engagement. Thus, it is assumed that when consumers are emotionally engaged, they will be more likely to visit destinations and share eWOM. This hypothesis was tested on 300 respondents who had experience traveling and distributing travel vlogs via social media. Using Smart-PLS 3.0 software, a structural equation modeling approach was used to test the research hypothesis. The results of hypothesis testing suggest that entertainment plays a significant role in forming emotional engagement, whereas information seeking plays a lesser role. From a U&G perspective, to travel vlogs on YouTube, it is evident that consumers who seek entertainment are the most emotionally engaged. Furthermore, the results also reveal that when consumers feel emotionally engaged with video travel vlogs on YouTube, they are strongly motivated to visit the destination and share eWOM through social media. As a result, it can be seen that emotional engagement is a crucial factor in the behavior of intent to visit and eWOM for destinations. A number of theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.