What Motivates Tourists to Get Involved in Cyberspace? A Comparative Look at Two Countries

Abstract

This paper aims to test the influences of perceived usefulness on travelers' willingness to create user-generated content through attitudes toward social media, travel planning attitude, and electronic word of mouth, as mediating variables and compare the results of the proposed model between two separate nations. The research model and interactions among the constructs are tested and validated through structural equation modeling (SEM). Randomly selected qualified responses from Mexican (192) and Taiwanese (200) participants are analyzed. The comparative analysis of statistical results shows that in Mexico, travel planning attitude does not directly influence travelers' involvement to generated UGC. Choosing a travel destination is the reason why Mexicans would generate content. While in Taiwan, the non-significant direct relationship is between the electronic word of mouth and user-generated content. Despite the massive social media affection in Taiwan, reading and collecting information online is not the reason for Taiwanese to get involved in providing online content.