Monkey see, monkey do! de-influencing travel

Abstract

ABSTRACT The concept of ‘de-influencing’, which has emerged as a new movement aiming not to consume in the consumer society, is gaining more popularity on social media. However, the concept of ‘de-influencing’ has not been fully understood. This has made it a necessity to define the ‘de-influencing’ concept. In addition, the conceptualisation and determination of the categories of ‘de-influencing travel’, which aims to reduce consumption in the context of tourist products, will be an important milestone in understanding and implementing the concept. Accordingly, to understand and define what the concepts of ‘de-influencing’ are, 10,365 contents shared by 26 de-influencers on Tiktok, which is the platform where the concept emerged first, was examined in the study. The posts tagged as de-influencing travel’ and ‘de-influencing’ on Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook and Reddit, which are the most commonly used social media platforms, were searched and out of 12,283 content, 1152 posts related to tourism were subjected to content analysis. With the content analysis, 10 categories related to de-influencing travel were obtained: hype, inappropriate, show alternative, unreliable influencer content, overprice, over-consumerism, sustainability, impulsive purchasing, saving money and complaining. The research findings provide original suggestions to tourism enterprises, researchers and social media phenomena.