Ongoing Trust and Tourism O2O Platform Continuance: A Two-Trustee Involved Model With Moderating Variable

Xinxiang Zhang

doi:10.1177/2158244020920659

Abstract

Continuous use is critical for the survival and success of any tourism online-to-offline (O2O) platforms. Much prior research has focused on initial trust on initial adoption of e-commerce websites but pays less attention to the effect of ongoing trust on continuous use. This study presents an integrated model, including two categories of ongoing trust to test their contributions on tourism O2O platform continuance. It also examines their different antecedents, impacts, and the interactions between them. Drawn from a web-based survey with 418 responses, empirical results show that ongoing trust in O2O platforms positively influence platform continuance, whereas ongoing trust in offline destinations positively influence ongoing trust in platforms. Confirmations of expected product and service quality are significant to ongoing trust in destinations, but confirmation of expected convenience is not. Confirmations of expected platform quality, specific guarantees, and loyalty program benefits are significant to ongoing trust in platforms. In addition, the antecedents and effects of ongoing trust in platforms are different between experienced and less-experienced customers. These findings have useful implications on how academics and practitioners work together to ensure the sustainable development of their tourism O2O businesses.

Highlights

With the widespread use of information technologies and exponential growth of social communities, a new e-commerce model called O2O e-commerce has become increasingly popular in recent years (Pan et al, 2019)
Based on the above discussion, this study suggests the following: Hypothesis 1b (H1b): Confirmation of expected service quality is positively related to ongoing trust in offline destinations
Little research on system continuance has examined the relationship between expectation-confirmation of quality and ongoing trust building in terms of O2O platform, based upon the above discussion, we suggest the following: Hypothesis 3a (H3a): Confirmation of expected platform quality is positively related to ongoing trust in tourism O2O platforms

Summary

Introduction

With the widespread use of information technologies and exponential growth of social communities, a new e-commerce model called O2O e-commerce has become increasingly popular in recent years (Pan et al, 2019). O2O platforms attract customers through merchant-provided or used-generated online contents, whereas the real consumption must be experienced by customers offline (Du & Tang, 2014). This model is quite suitable for experiential service industries. China’s online travel industry is a large-scale experiential service industry with O2O activities, which has been developing and expanding rapidly and maturely. Attracted by the great profit potential, more internet firms are entering this new market. As a result, this market is increasingly crowded and customers can switch among competitors

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