Topic The impact of travel blog attributes on Indonesian millennial travelers - Yeyen Pratika

Nội dung text: Topic The impact of travel blog attributes on Indonesian millennial travelers - Yeyen Pratika

1. 568 HỘI THẢO KHOA HỌC QUỐC TẾ KHỞI NGHIỆP ĐỔI MỚI SÁNG TẠO QUỐC GIA Recently, social media, such as blog, is the main source to gain any information regarding traveling. Agarwal et al. (2014) underlined influence bloggers can drive public opinion, thus their review and opinion has important role. Chen et al. (2014) said that by using personal blog, many travelers can share their trips and the readers can get information about potential destination and also get to response to the blog post. Moreover, Chen et al. (2014) also revealed that blog can be seen as asynchronous and many-to-many channel for conveying travel-related electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM). The existence of travel blogger in Indonesia has already occurred since years ago. Tourism Ministry of Indonesia realized that travel bloggers can effectively promote travel destinations. Since the last few years, the Indonesian government has increasingly collaborated with travel bloggers to promote tourism. This collaboration indicates that the role of travel blogger is very important. However, Chen et al. (2014) revealed that not all travel blogs have significant influence to support the intention of visiting. The characteristics of travel bloggers (age, sex, credibility, identity, self expression, etc) have significant influence for readers’ perception on their blog contents (Armstrong and McAdams, 2009; Lee and Gretzel, 2014). Thus, this study aims to examine the influence of blog attributes on the intention of visiting of millennial travelers in Indonesia. 2. Literature Review 2.1 Travel Blog and Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM) Singh et al. (2008) stated that blog is one of the latest and most quickly expanding forms of media for internet communication and publication. Blog is designed to enable common people without much technical or programming skill to create web content (Wang, 2010). Free blog websites with the easy-to- use are numerous, thus it becomes a mainstream media to share, publish and exchange information. As one of attractive social networking sites (SNSs), blog becomes more common to be used as electronic word- of-mouth (e-WOM). E-WOM is defined as any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the internet (Hennig-Thurau et al. in Park et al., 2017). Blog is also used to review some products. Recently, consumers often read online reviews before they buy a product. Consumers’ purchase behaviors can be influenced by online product reviews (Floyd et al., 2014). E-WOM is becoming an important marketing tool in the social media era (Park et al., 2017). The use of blog as e-WOM also impacts on tourism industry. A study conducted by Abubakar and Ilkan (2016) regarding medical tourism found that e-WOM influences destination trust and intention to travel. Wang (2012) addressed travel blogs is like internet travel journals that usually provide personal thoughts and reviews on a specific destination, personal travel stories and details of trip. As a business of selling experiences, tourism is intangible and uncertain (Chen et al., 2014). Abubakar and Ilkan (2016) highlighted tourism is associated with riskiness and uncertainty due to tourism product and service cannot be accessed until the moment of its consumption. Thus, this condition leads them to rely on online reviews (Jeong and Jang, 2011; Abubakar and Ilkan, 2016). Travel blogs can assists in the conceptualization of tourism experiences (Bosangit et al., 2015). Information shared on blog is believed to be able to describe the experience during traveling. 2.2 Millennial and online review Millennial is generation who born between 1980 and 1999 (Gurau, 2012). This generation is characterized by higher rates of internet adoption (Lissitsa and Kol, 2016). Internet provides people with
2. 570 HỘI THẢO KHOA HỌC QUỐC TẾ KHỞI NGHIỆP ĐỔI MỚI SÁNG TẠO QUỐC GIA Basically, people who rely on blogs have already familiar with the bloggers. Borah (2015) mentioned that individuals who consider information provided by blogs are more credible because they are familiar with the style of blogging. Furthermore, Johnson and Kaye (2004) also mentioned that blog readers find blogs more credible than mainstream media. A blog is different from a traditional website because of the changing commentary from the author, from a forum because control of conversation is held by the author, from review sites because of the expected personal voice (Cosenza et al., 2015). The credibility of blog could influence on the acceptance of readers to bloggers’ recommendations. Although most blogs is published anonymously, Chesney and Su (2010) found that when the bloggers’ identity is revealed, it does not give any effect on its credibility. This study also addressed that the evaluation of credibility is based on the readers’ experiences and their personal preferences. Thus, the next hypothesis is proposed: H2: Reliability has a positive influence on perceived enjoyment of blog usage As a media of storytelling, blog provides an overview and understanding of certain issue for the readers. In tourism area, McGregor and Holmes (1999) underlined that storytelling is a critical point in understanding individuals’ travel experiences because it captures memories and impressions. However, storytelling is not only sharing experiences through writing, but also pictures and graphics. Thurm (2014) found that pictures are not enough understandable, additional explanation with some facts and details is needed to make it clear. Thus, the combination of writing skill and graphic is needed to make travel blog understandable. Understandability of content is influenced by background knowledge (Xu and Chen, 2006). Thus, Xu and Chen (2006) refers understandability as to the extent to which readers perceives that provided information is easy to read and understand. The usage of multimedia material like photos and films can easier help readers to understand a travel experience (Chen et al., 2014) Travel blogs can help readers to understand local or historical culture of certain place (Wang, 2012). The main points of blog are new knowledge and understanding of places, people and events (Bosangit et al., 2015). Chen et al. (2014) mentioned that a destination can only be imagined if bloggers’ experiences are understandable. Having cognitive empathy also drives the ability of readers to understand the feelings of bloggers (Akgun et al., 2015). However, the uncertainty and ambiguity may happen if information provided is difficult to understand (Chen et al., 2014). The readers may also lose interest in reading a blog if it is hard to understand. Hence, Xu and Chen (2006) underlined that readers may reject the bloggers’ opinion if the blog is hard to understand. The more understandable a blog is, the more likely the enjoyable image formation process will continue (Chen et al., 2014). Thus, the next hypothesis is proposed: H3: Understandability has a positive influence on perceived enjoyment of blog usage 2.4 Perceived usage enjoyment on intention to visit Travel blogs that share enjoyable personal experiences encourage readers to experience the same feeling. It motivates readers to visit the same destination. While examined the travel intention of theme park, Lee et al. (2014) explored impartial travel blogs are trusted because of its practical information and the usefulness of these blogs can improve readers’ intention to visit a theme park. The research conducted by Huang et al. (2010) found travel blogs play important role in the processing of advertising messages, thus it demonstrated the positive impact of ad effect on purchase intention of travel products. Akgun, et al. (2015) conducted a research regarding the influence of storytelling in travel writings. The study found that perceived esthetics, narrative structure and self-reference will induce reader empathy that could provide a positive emotional response and behavioral intentions toward travel destination.
3. 572 HỘI THẢO KHOA HỌC QUỐC TẾ KHỞI NGHIỆP ĐỔI MỚI SÁNG TẠO QUỐC GIA accurate or believable (Chen et al., 2014). The readers will not consider travel blog as an important tool to gather information if they cannot understand the content of travel blog. Thus, understandability is defined as the degree to which the readers perceive the blog’s content about the destination as easy to read and understand (Chen et al., 2014). The way of bloggers delivers the message through their writing or photographic skills can create the enjoyment for the readers. Bilgihan and Bujisic (2014) pointed that enjoyment of online experience can be provided through the visual appealing design. In this research, blog usage enjoyment is defined as the degree of perceived enjoyment while using a blog (Chen et al., 2014). Travel blogs also provide inspiration for travelers in determining their tourist destination. Therefore, behavioral intention to visit is defined as the willingness to visit the destination mentioned in the blog (Chen et al., 2014). Data was collected through online questionnaire. There are 282 respondents who participate in this research. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used in this research by using LISREL as the analysis tool. Hair et al. (2014) mentioned that SEM allows researchers to examine a series of dependence relationships simultaneously. In this study, the convergent validity was based on the value of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE). According to Hair et al. (2014), the main purpose of CFA is to assess the construct validity of a proposed measurement theory. Therefore, to know how well the considered variables represent the constructs, CFA was used in this research. Construct Reliability (CR) was used to measure the reliability of research. 4. RESULT Table 2 Measurement model result Construct Indicators Std. Loading CR AVE Novelty NOV1 0.75 0.84 0.51 NOV2 0.75 NOV3 0.74 NOV4 0.69 NOV5 0.65 Reliability REL1 0.83 0.88 0.70 REL2 0.84 REL3 0.84 Understandability UND1 0.82 0.89 0.73 UND2 0.89 UND3 0.86 Perceived Usage USE1 0.78 0.91 0.72 Enjoyment USE2 0.79 USE3 0.92 USE4 0.90 Behavioral Intention to Visit BEH1 0.88 0.85 0.73 BEH2 0.91 Hair et al. (2014) mentioned that the standardized loading estimates should be 0.5 and ideally 0.7 or higher. Moreover, to suggest adequate convergent validity, the value of AVE should be 0.5 or greater (Hair et al., 2014). The result as mentioned in Table 2 shows that the standardized loading estimates of all constructs spread from 0.65 to 0.92 and the value of AVE ranged from 0.53 to 0.73. Thus, the result indicates that the convergent validity has no problem.
4. 574 HỘI THẢO KHOA HỌC QUỐC TẾ KHỞI NGHIỆP ĐỔI MỚI SÁNG TẠO QUỐC GIA This result of study also shows that reliability and understanding of blog content has influenced the perceived enjoyment of blog usage. Contradictory with the finding, Chen,et al. (2014) have found that reliability does not have any impact on the blog usage enjoyment. However, the study found that understanding of blog has a positive influence on the blog usage enjoyment (Chen et al., 2014). Xu and Chen (2006) underlined that people tend to dismiss the document that is unreliable or impossible to understand. The reliable information could encourage millennial to read the blog. The readers expect to get reliable information so that when they have a chance to visit a destination as mentioned on blogs, they could find similarity and enjoy the destionation as their expectation. Thus, the usefulness of blog content is needed to influence the intention to visit (Lee, Wu and Lee, 2014). Application and website should be designed in consideration of users’ utilitarian and hedonic values (Ozturk et al., 2016). Utilitarian and hedonic values can influence the reasons why people keep reading a certain travel blog. They trust blogs due to reliable information and find an enjoyment while reading it. Different from this study result, Borah (2015) found that in the political issues, the blog post is more credible if the author is identified as a journalist. However, for the non-journalist bloggers, the blog post is considered as credible information based on blog traffic. Thus, influential travel bloggers could also influence the credibility of blogs. In addition, the way those bloggers present their experiences through writing style, pictures and other features could affect on the enjoyment of blog usage. The result shows that the behavioral intention to visit is influenced by the perceived usage of enjoyment. This finding is supported by Chen et al. (2014) who highlighted the same result. When reading travel blogs, people actually care on how the stories, pictures and presentations of travel blogs can give them excitement, curiosity and persuasion (Wang, 2012). The combination of those features encourages them to keep reading the travel blog. Wang (2012) pointed that the perceived destination image which is described through the stories, pictures and presentations of travel blogs was found to be a strong predictor of the behavioral intention to travel. As the result revealed by Lee et al. (2014), it was found that while reading blog, the emotion of readers was influenced. Thus, blog usefulness, blog appeal and brand appeal should be created in order to influence the public’s behavioral intention to visit theme parks (Lee et al., 2014). In addition, Huang (2010) also found that boring information produces low involvement, thus, interesting contents are needed to build the involvement and drives the intention of readers. Finally, the finding is consistent with the research conducted by Akgun et al. (2015) that found while reading, emotions may influences hedonist consumption emotions and thus it might have impact on visit intention to destination. Novelty 0.26 Perceived 0.62 Behavioral Reliability Usage of Intention to 0.37 Enjoyment Visit 0.19 Understandability Figure 1 Final model 6. SUGGESTION AND CONCLUSION It is generally agreed that understanding traveler behavior is critical point in tourism area. Traveler industries need to understand that the way how millennial collect information is way broader. Travel blogs
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