An Investigation of the Influence of Travel Bloggers and Vloggers on Consumer's Toursim Decision Making in China

At present, the internet has become an important channel for consumers to obtain tourism information. Among the channels of tourism information sources, the official channels only account for a small part of the information. Most of the information comes from websites such as professional travel websites, tourism forums, and travel blogs via social media. It should be noticed that social media has occupied a significant position in the process of consumer’s tourism decision-making. Therefore, research on the impact of travel blogs on consumer’s decision making is necessary. Through systematic literature review of domestic and foreign studies, the author finds that the research on travel blogs via social media is limited. Most of the researchers tend to explore the characteristics and communication effectiveness of travel blogs, and also get an insight into the marketing value of professional travel blogs from the perspective of marketing. There is very little research on the relationship between tourism consumption behaviour and the impact of travel blogs. Based on this limitation, the author tries to comprehensively understand the influence by conducting quantitative research to analyze the important role which travel blogs play in affecting consumer’s tourism decision making. In the first stage of the study, the author conduct secondary information research to look into theories of influencer marketing, travel blogging and vlogging, consumer involvement and consumer’s tourism behaviour. The aim is to grasp the progress of this research field, to find the starting point of this study, and to provide the theoretical basis to this research. In the next stage, based on the previous studies, the author conduct quantitative research by designing a questionnaire. The questionnaire sets up a Likert scale to study the factors that influence consumer’s tourism decision making. Through online data collection, the dissertation summarizes four influencing factors of the research objectives. They are consumer’s subjective knowledge of tourism products and services, the intensity of travel blogs and vlogs contents attraction via social media, the trust of travel blogs, and consumer’s perceived benefits of their expected travel behaviour. The above are independent variables, and the impact of consumer’s tourism decision making is the dependent variable of the study. Through data analysis, this dissertation indicates that the intensity of travel blogs and vlogs contents attraction via social media, trust, and consumer’s perceived benefits of expected travel behaviour have significantly positive impact on consumer’s tourism decision making. In the last section of the study, it makes a conclusion. In addition, it points out the limitations of this research, and provides suggestions for further research