What does personality tell us about travellers’ social media use, social return, and travel intentions?

Abstract

ABSTRACT While much has been written on the influence personality has over travel behaviour, few have researched the relationship between personality, social media usage, and intent to travel. This research note is one of the first to bring social media into the discussion to see how one’s personality influences their utilitarian and socially symbolic uses of social media, social return, and, ultimately, their intentions to travel. Data from 1,653 international tourists from the United States of America’s top 5 travel markets revealed the Big 5 Personalities had significant but divergent relationships on utilitarian and symbolic motivations for using social media suggesting marketers should use personality profiles in their social media marketing campaigns. ‘Social Return’ was also found to be a crucial element in the proposed framework, reinforcing the proposition that DMOs and other tourism industry practitioners should use social media as a contemporary tool to boost travel to their destinations.