Can “Live Streaming” Really Drive Visitors to the Destination? From the Aspect of “Social Presence”

Tao Zhang,Yanan Wang,Wenkun Zhang

doi:10.1177/21582440211006691

Abstract

The combination of live-streaming technology and tourism is an important development in the evolution of tourism experiences. Research on live-streaming tourism is becoming popular, but empirical studies on the relationship between live streaming and travel intention remain underexplored. The aim of this article is to determine whether live streaming has an impact on travel intention. This article collects 614 questionnaires and uses structural equation models (SEMs) to test the relevant hypotheses. This study makes some contributions to the literature on live-streaming tourism. First, it explains the relationship between live streaming and travel intention from the perspective of social presence: The presence of a destination image, the presence of an interaction, and the presence of production can effectively improve people’s trust and, in return, influence their travel intention. Second, this article verifies the role of trust in tourism management. This article is one of the earliest studies on the relationship between live streaming and travel intention, which has significance for the development of tourism management–related theories and practical management.

Highlights

As a new internet trend, live streaming, which has gained great popularity, has been participating in all-sided events with high interactivity, aiming to meet the needs of consumers by presenting all current real-time situations to end users through internet media (Zhao et al, 2018).Live streaming, which is characterized by interaction, takes the form of a small community
Jiang et al (2019) and Park and Lin (2020), who considered the importance of visual elements in consumers’ trust and shopping intentions in detail, concluded that it would be significant to study this dimension of social presence
The value .562 stands for the percentage of the interpreted variance (R2) for destination trust; .391 means the percentages for visit intention, which marks that the structural model is of predictive relevance (Hair et al, 2011)

Summary

Introduction

As a new internet trend, live streaming, which has gained great popularity, has been participating in all-sided events with high interactivity, aiming to meet the needs of consumers by presenting all current real-time situations to end users through internet media (Zhao et al, 2018). There are few studies on the relationship between live streaming and tourists’ travel motivation, so it is necessary to study how live streaming affects potential tourists’ psychological activities and behavioral tendencies Against this background, the aim of this article is to determine the relationship between the social presence of travel live streaming and tourists’ travel motivation. The aim of this article is to determine the relationship between the social presence of travel live streaming and tourists’ travel motivation To achieve this goal, this article develops a research model emphasizing three dimensions of social presence (the presence of a destination image, the presence of an interaction, and the presence of production) and travel intention. This article provides some practical suggestions for tourism managers to make better use of live streaming to effectively attract tourists

Literature Review

Result

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Conclusion