User-Generated Multimedia Content Impact on the Destination Choice: Five Dimensions of Consumer Experience

Abstract

This article proposes a complex approach to the phenomenon known in the literature as the consumption of user-generated multimedia content (UGMC) in the context of the effects generated by the pandemic on the consumption of tourist services. Thus, it analyzes the ways in which the creation and consumption of multimedia content affect the flow experience and the ways in which consumption experiences related to tourist services are transferred to other consumers. The pandemic crisis has fundamentally affected the ways in which consumers interact online with different types of multimedia content. In particular, consumers of travel services have developed behaviors that promote the transfer of trust in safe tourist destinations based on connecting to various forms of multimedia content (pictures, videos, blog posts, etc.) created and distributed online by other consumers who share their own positive consumer experiences. Based on a sample of 673 respondents, we validate a theoretical model that confirms the influence of the different dimensions of the consumption experience of tourist destinations (sensory, emotional, cognitive, conative, and relational). The influence is exerted at the level of the flow experience and exploratory behavior—the experience lived as a combination of elements, of which the emotional dimension is among the strongest, due to the anxiety caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.