Uses and Gratifications Motivations and Their Effects on Attitude and e-Tourist Satisfaction: A Multilevel Approach

Jang-Won Moon,Yuting An

doi:10.3390/tourhosp3010009

Jang-Won Moon, Yuting An

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/tourhosp3010009

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Abstract

This study employed the Uses and Gratifications Theory to explore the motivations for utilizing a smartphone during trips and satisfactions with travel experience. This study adopted multilevel SEM to explore how U&G motivations affect e-tourist satisfaction when attitude toward smartphone use by tourists serves as a mediator. To this end, data collected from tourists travelling in the US were analyzed using a multilevel approach. The findings are: (1) U&G motivations (social interaction, entertainment, information, and convenience) are determined, (2) valid and reliable scales for all constructs are developed, (3) U&G motivations have a significant effect on tourists’ attitude toward smartphone use, which, in turn, significantly affects e-tourist satisfaction (hedonic, utilitarian, and overall) at the individual level. The results from this study provide practical and theoretical implications for e-tourism communication and tourism marketing.

Highlights

The tourism industry and its associated businesses have relied on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), smartphones, to communicate with tourists, with research in this field centering on tourists’ use of this technology [1,2]
Some tourism scholars have pointed to the need for more smartphone and tourism research focused on measuring constructs in relation to the tourism experience based on a theoretical framework [3,4,5,6]
Lagrange Multiplier (LM) tests were used to identify and address misfit in the model, with the LM test statistics indicating that the researcher needed to add four error covariances in the initial model because they were more correlated than what the factors reflected and reduced the model fit because of their extra relationships

Summary

Introduction

The tourism industry and its associated businesses have relied on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), smartphones, to communicate with tourists, with research in this field centering on tourists’ use of this technology [1,2]. There is a research need based on theoretical frameworks with their corresponding appropriate constructs. Some tourism scholars have pointed to the need for more smartphone and tourism research focused on measuring constructs in relation to the tourism experience based on a theoretical framework [3,4,5,6]. To address this need, the research proposed here employs the Uses and Gratifications Theory to explore the motivations for utilizing a smartphone and satisfactions with this experience

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