When Cell Phones Become Travel Buddies: Social Attribution to Mobile Phones in Travel

Applying the computing technology continuum of perspective model into mobile technology, this study investigates tourists’ social attribution to mobile phones while travelling. The tendency to place social attribution to and interact socially with mobile phones in the context of travel is influenced by tourists’ perception of the positive social characteristics of mobile phones (i.e., object attribution) and the intensity of mobile phone use for travel-related purposes at tourism destinations (i.e., circumstance attribution). It was found that tourists’ core selfevaluation did not exert an influence in the process of social attribution to mobile phones. This supports the importance of anthropomorphism in the designing of mobile technology for tourists, in that more intelligent and social phones are potentially more persuasive to influence tourists’ behaviour regardless of their personality