Tourists' Information Sharing Intention in Social Media: An Empirical Study in Bangladesh

Abstract

This study investigates tourists’ information sharing intention in social media in the context of Bangladesh, and the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), and Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) were used as the theoretical foundation. Data were collected from 301 tourists who use social media through an online survey and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The estimation revealed that argument quality has a strong influence on information-seeking motive, entertainment motive, and relationship maintenance motive, and information-seeking motive also influenced by source credibility. At the same time, source credibility does not influence entertainment motive and relationship maintenance motive. Furthermore, tourists’ information sharing intention is greatly influenced by all these three motives. The findings will expand the current knowledge of similar studies, and policy-makers can use it in practice. The implications, limitations, and future research directions are also discussed.