“Domino effects on eWOM?” understanding consumers’ dynamic perceptions of online travel reviews and perceived travel risk: A three-stage longitudinal approach

Abstract

Although the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is gradually diminishing, its influence still persists through people’s experience of travel consumption, including travel risk perception and cautious information processing modes of online travel reviews (OTRs). Since the onset of COVID-19, literature has witnessed an upsurge in illuminating tourists’ intro-pandemic risk perceptions and information behaviors. However, from an evolutionary perspective, a whole spectrum to trace and compare the variations in tourist risk perception and OTR evaluation patterns over time remains unclear. Spanning three investigations pre-, during, and post-pandemic (in 2019, 2020, and 2023), results generally confirm that people’s perception of travel risk has undergone an inverted-U-shaped change, yet perceived equipment risk still maintains at a high level. Additionally, drawing upon the information adoption model (IAM), the results indicate that individuals increasingly consider the argument quality cues (informativeness, persuasiveness) and source credibility cues (expertise, trustworthiness, homophily) of online travel reviews as important over time. The dynamic relationships among different attributes of online travel reviews, perceived information usefulness, and perceived travel risk were also illuminated. Theoretically, findings of this study enriched our understanding of the dynamic role of IAM elements in predicting information usefulness and perceived travel risk in different phases of a public health crisis context. Practically, this study not only provides guidelines on post-pandemic risk management for tourism and hospitality managers, but also gives specific advice for travel websites to best optimize their marketing communication strategies through online reviews in alliance with different risk communication contexts.