E-Book for Promoting Buddhist Tourism in Thailand

Abstract

The purposes of this research were 1) to explore a set of knowledge and develop e-book to promote Buddhist tourism in Thailand, and 2) to evaluate Thai tourists' satisfaction with the use of electronic books. The study began by exploring a set of knowledge and appropriate processes in developing e-book that would affect tourists’ travel interest. Subsequently, the satisfaction of 424 Thai tourists who were willing to test the e-book was surveyed via questionnaires in Google form. The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation). Results showed that the evaluation outcome of e-book acceptance based on TAM concept is very interesting as most of the evaluation scores are very good (4.21-5.00 because the class interval is set at 0.8) and consistent with our assumptions, that is, the content on the e-book including text and images and all information positively affects user’s interest in using it as a source of knowledge for traveling as the item “Interest in using this e-book as a source of information about tourist destinations” received the highest score ( = 4.32, S.D. = 0.48). Next is the presentation form, content structure and information layout in the item “Presentation of public relations media on the e-book has an effect on interest in Buddhist tourism.” received a very high score from volunteers (= 4.28, S.D. = 0.45). It indicates that all public relations media including images of important Buddhist landmark, architecture, messages about Buddhist culture, etc., has an positive impact on the volunteers' interest in Buddhist tourism.