Investigating the credibility of online travel reviews adoption in trip planning intention among Indian travellers

Abstract

Travelers evaluate online travel reviews usage through their argument quality and credibility of the source. As a result, travel marketers such as hoteliers, destination marketers and travel agency websites managers should set up mechanisms to assess tourists' concern to avoid unfavorable experience from social media reviews. Accordingly, this study aims to develop a scale and validate the modified Information Adoption Model (IAM) in the tourism context, while studying the impact of online review usefulness on its adoption. Secondly, the mediation role of travelers' attitude toward online reviews between review usefulness and its adoption is determined. Further, the credibility of online travel review adoption on the behavioral intentions of travelers has been assessed. This paper adapts the modified IAM given by Abedi et al. (2019) to develop scale and provide a comprehensive model in the tourism context. The study used 284 travelers who use online travel reviews from social media for their trip planning to evaluate the proposed model through SmartPLS software. The results show that online travel review usefulness significantly affects online travel review adoption. Secondly, the relationship between online review usefulness and its adoption is fully mediated by the mediating variable (attitude towards online travel reviews). Hence, this empirical paper intends to add to the research on online travel review adoption by travelers for their trip planning, considering the forwarding of information as one of the behavioral intentions along with purchase intentions, which depicts the novelty of this paper.