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Purpose This study aims to examine the factors influencing tourists to share their travel experiences on social media (SM). Design/methodology/approach An online questionnaire was administered to 1,280 American travelers, and the data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings The PLS-SEM results indicated that non-participant sharing had a direct and positive effect on tourists’ tendencies to share their travel experiences on SM. Environmental, relational and security concerns had direct and negative effects on actual travel-experience sharing, whereas altruism, personal fulfillment and self-actualization had direct and positive effects on actual travel-experience sharing. Practical implications Travelers were found to attach importance to content shared on SM when they believed the content to be objective and reliable and were more likely to share such content on their own SM accounts. This finding suggests that tourist-created content is crucial. Tourism businesses, therefore, should reduce or eliminate inhibitory factors to increase content sharing. This research provides guidance for tourism businesses’ SM initiatives. Originality/value The study, first, contributes to an understanding of the factors affecting the sharing of travel experiences on SM. Second, this study develops a holistic approach that integrates the factors that might affect tourists’ SM content-sharing behavior into a single model.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the formation of knowledge management (KM) decisions, including intention for knowledge contribution and knowledge exploration. The authors build on the goal-directed model and a trust-based lens to develop a belief-trust-decision framework. The authors theorize belief as individual factors (one’s virtual skill) and environmental factors (cooperative norms, familiarity), and trust as emotional trust and cognitive trust. Individual factors represent one’s virtual skill to control knowledge exchange, while environmental factors reflect the level of support/control for this exchange by the context. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a survey method to collect data and partial least squares to analyze them. Findings The authors found that KM decision is affected by two types of trust, directly or indirectly. They are, in turn, influenced by individual factors and environmental factors. Research limitations/implications Generalizability of the findings to virtual communities with different collaboration protocol deserves further investigation. This study contributes to the research on KM and social behavior by providing a comprehensive explanation on KM decision through one’s goal achievement in knowledge exchange behavior, in terms of trust development. Besides, the authors theorize one’s belief on knowledge exchange as skill-control and context-control to represent the drivers for trust. Practical implications The results provide suggestion for managers regarding how skill-control and context-control should be managed to improve trust development, which serves as goal achievement for KM decisions. Originality/value The authors extend prior work by yielding a new insight into how and why one’s beliefs on skill-control and context-control for knowledge exchange are transferred into KM decision through one’s goal achievement, characterized as trust development at both emotional and cognitive levels.

By using Web 2.0, backpackers can easily collect travel information and plan their trips. In this study, the theory of planned behavior and the technology acceptance model were integrated with interpersonal influence, electronic word-of-mouth, flexibility, personal innovativeness, and critical mass to measure their effects on behavioral intentions toward self-service travel. A sample of 284 questionnaires was collected via an online survey. The results indicated that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control had significant effects on backpackers’ behavioral intentions. In addition, the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and flexibility of travel websites had significant effects on attitudes toward a given behavior. Moreover, the effects of electronic word-of-mouth, critical mass, and interpersonal influence on subjective norms, and those of self-efficacy and facilitating conditions on perceived behavioral control were significant. Based on these empirical results, theoretical and practical implications for promoting self-service travel websites are proposed.