Exploring behaviors of social media-induced tourists and the use of behavioral interventions as salient destination response strategy

Abstract

Social media platforms, like Instagram, have played a significant role in augmenting the profile of several previously obscure destinations. However, some of these places were subsequently ‘ruined’ due to related impacts associated with the type of visitor behaviors that are social media-induced. It is thus critical to better understand how to overcome such issues by discerning salient destination response strategies that cater to the cognitive biases of such travelers. This research explains the effectiveness of behavioral intervention approaches to manage the impacts of social media-induced tourism by analyzing four destination strategies that have addressed photographic practices: 1) Vienna, Austria, 2) Faroe Islands, 3) Yellowstone National Park, USA, and 4) Gion District of Kyoto, Japan. The key findings that carry theoretical and practical significance include the explication of tourists' cognitive biases targeted by various behavioral interventions, and the leveraging of social media as a tool to implement choice architecture that sublety encourages desirable traveler behaviors congruent to each destination among social media-heavy travelers. The applications of this study are relevant to communities struggling with a scenario of overdevelopment due to popularity on social media and are therefore receiving increasing deterioration in quality of life.