Utilitarian motivations to engage with travel websites : an interactive technology adoption model

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to investigate perceptions about interactive travel websites. The researchers hypothesize that engaging content, the quality of information and source credibility has a significant effect on the consumers’ utilitarian motivations to continue using them in the future.

Design/methodology/approach: A structured survey questionnaire was used to gather data from 1,287 online users, who were members of two popular social media groups. The methodology relied on a partial least squares (PLS) approach to analyze the causal relationships within an extended information adoption model.

Findings: The findings reveal that the research participants perceive the utility of interactive travel websites and are willing to continue using them, particularly the responsive ones. The research participants suggest that these sites are easy-to-use, capture their attention, and offer them useful information on various tourism services. The results also indicate that they appreciate their source credibility (in terms of their trustworthiness and expertise of their curators) as well as their quality content.

Research limitations/Implications: This study integrates key measures from the information adoption model (IAM) with a perceived interactivity construct, to better understand the individuals’ acceptance and use of interactive websites.

Practical implications: This research implies that service businesses ought to have engaging websites that respond to consumer queries, in a timely manner. Hence, they should offer a seamless experience to their visitors to encourage loyal behaviors and revisit intentions to their online domains.

Originality: To the best of our knowledge, there are no other studies that incorporated an interactive engagement construct with key constructs from IAM and from the technology acceptance model (TAM). This contribution underlines the importance of measuring the individuals’ perceptions about the engagement capabilities of interactive media when investigating information and/or technology adoption.