Effect of parasocial relationship on tourist’s destination attitude and visit intention

Abstract

Background Along with the rapid development of the Internet, the form of destination marketing is becoming increasingly innovative and diverse. Celebrity endorsement via social media, as an effective marketing strategy, has been widely used by various tourism companies to attract and engage with their customers. Previous studies have investigated the various aspects of such endorsement (e.g. the effect of endorser’s attributes) in different contexts (e.g. Hotel, Restaurant, Airline). However, little research has focused on the influence of the tourists’ parasocial relationship with endorsers on destination marketing. Accordingly, the current study aims to explore the role of parasocial relationships on tourists’ destination attitude and visit intention. Method This study adopted quantitative method and conducted Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) for data analysis. 498 valid questionnaires were collected from Weibo (One of China’s most popuar social media platforms). Results Results suggested that endorser’s credibility positively influenced follower’s parasocial relationship (p<0.001), which in turn positively influenced destination attitude and visit intention (p<0.001). Additionally, the parasocial relationship significantly mediated the relationship between credibility and destination attitude as well as visit intention (p<0.001). Conclusion The emerging trend of celerbity endorsement via live-streaming makes tourism destination marketing more diverse and even effective. Through exploring the underlying mechanism of celebrity endorsement, this study can provide destination marketers with insights about how to build and strengthen the tourist’s attitude and visit intention towards destiantion by developing their parasocial relationships with endorsers. This study also adds to the literature of using Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) in tourism and hospiatlity research.

How nostalgic taste on the screen stimulates the consumption of time-honoured restaurants: The mediation role of parasocial interaction

“…As a variable intermediate between the organism (O) and the response (R) in the SOR model, parasocial interaction is also affected by credibility and emotional involvement. According to the results, H4 and H5 are supported, respectively, indicating that both credibility of the blogger (H4) and viewers' emotional involvement (H5) can further foster the parasocial interaction between viewers and the blogger, which is consistent with previous studies (Zhang et al, 2020;Yılmazdoğan et al, 2021;Zheng et al, 2022).…”

“…For example, trustworthiness and expertise positively influence parasocial interaction in the tourism context (Zhang et al, 2020;Yılmazdoğan et al, 2021). Endorser's credibility was found to positively influence followers' parasocial relationship (Zheng et al, 2022). Regarding bloggers' content, viewers will have parasocial interaction if the information is credible (Nurul and Muhammad, 2020).…”

Ways to Implement Effective Product Placement on YouTube

“…Existing scales were adopted to measure all constructs as follows: prominence (Cárdaba et al, 2022), relevance (Fleck et al, 2012), YouTuber favorability (Rice et al, 2012), community favorability (Rice et al, 2012;Wang et al, 2019), YouTuber expertise, YouTuber trustworthiness, YouTuber attractiveness (Zheng et al, 2022), brand attitude (Fleck et al, 2012); and purchase intention (Wang et al, 2019). See Table 1.…”

Influencer marketing jako nowoczesne narzędzie promocji w branży turystycznej

“…Wraz z rozwojem nowych technologii firmy turystyczne i organizacje zarządzające destynacjami starają się jak najlepiej wykorzystać infuencerów do promowania miejsca docelowego [16] . Europejczycy coraz częściej podróżują oraz wydają więcej pieniędzy na swoje podróże [17][18] .…”