The influence of social impact and community attribute toward tourist trust formation on social commerce in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic: A case study of a tourist village in Indonesia

Abstract

Purpose – This research proposed a theoretical framework based on social impact, and community attributes theories to identify factors that influence the formation of trust among tourists towards Social Commerce (SC) utilized by a tourist village in Indonesia, particularly in the aftermath of COVID-19. In detail, this study focused on tourist village marketing through SC which emphasizes trust formation on destination readiness to welcome visitors, leading to the intention to revisit the village in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology/Design/Approach – 258 responses were obtained from Indonesian SC users interested in visiting tourist villages in Indonesia to evaluate the proposed model. The collected data were processed using confirmatory factor analysis followed by the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique to analyze the direct, indirect and moderating effects of trust predictors. Findings – The results showed that endorsement by other members had the most significant positive effect on trust, followed by Quality-assured shared information and Online Bridging. In contrast to the proposed hypothesis, responsiveness had a negative impact. Although parasocial interaction and followers’ comments were rejected, the indirect effect suggests that both factors influence trust through quality-assured shared information as a mediator. Overall, the result suggests that the quality of interaction and information in SC can reduce users’ concern about the consequences of COVID-19 in a destination and thus increase users’ trust in the willingness of places to host tourists. Originality of the research – This study provides a comprehensive approach that incorporates social and community aspects that influence tourists’ trust in Social Commerce marketing of tourist destinations after the COVID-19 pandemic. As this approach has not been studied in depth before, this study contributes to filling this gap, followed by a comprehensive analysis that includes direct, indirect and moderating effects.