Triadic spatial distance and social media assets for food tourists

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the potential impact of the triadic social interaction instigated by spatial distance between author, reader, and business that detects tourists’ geographical decision patterns. A social media asset for brands is a digital presence that encourages positive consumer responses in media communication. Using 2,129 items of author-reader-business paired review data, the findings indicate that geographical proximity between the review triad has assimilated patterns to assess reviews. Spatial regression analysis visualized spatial heterogeneity across US regions, showing that a lower spatial distance between tourists and businesses positively improved media assets; in contrast, close spatial proximity had a strong impact among peer tourists. As spatially heterogeneous tourists positively accept media sharing toward the business, the review triad model imposes the varying effects of triadic spatial distance that helps tourism policymakers implement an effective location-based social media marketing strategy for the food tourism industry.KEYWORDS: Spatial distancetriadic spatial distancesocial media assetsfood tourism AcknowledgementThis work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF–2023S1A5C2A03095253).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A3A2098438).