Identifying Opinion Leaders in Virtual Travel Community Based on Social Network Analysis

Abstract

With the thriving development of internet industry and continuous increase of consumer demand in outbound tourism in China, opinion leaders in virtual community have significant effects on consumers’ decision making process. Hence, identifying the opinion leader in virtual travel community (VTC) is significantly important for virtual community of outbound tourism. This study proposes the opinion leader recognition model based on social network analysis (SNA), and identifies leader value presented by construal influence, content influence, and activity to measure and evaluate the effect of opinion leader on consumers’ cognition. Based on the empirical data, this study examines the soundness of SNA in VTC dimensionally and comprehensively, and establishes the opinion leader recognition, which can be used in future research to explore the assessment mechanism of opinion leader’ effect on consumers.