| Summary: | 碩士 === 朝陽科技大學 === 休閒事業管理系碩士班 === 94 === With a tremendous increasing of Internet users, the issue of how these users search travel information via this new source and their derived information behavior has been motivated. The main purpose of this study is to preliminarily explore the travel information seekers’ searching behavior, especially the search process, on the Internet. It attempts to gain a better understanding of online travel information searching.
The qualitative methodology was adopted in the study. The research design was composed of a two-stage process. First, the Web searching behavior regarding a travel planning assignment for thirty information seekers was recorded through field observations at the terminal in a laboratory. Then, an in-depth interview was conducted with each participant immediately while the filed study was finished.
The data collected from two studies were analyzed using the grounded theory. The research findings were summarized below.
1.Online travel information search behavior constituted four parts: internal information search, executing information searching and browsing, encountering difficulties, and advanced information searching.
2.Initially, the information seekers started the Web-based information-seeking tasks by their internal information search; then they performed the tasks by a couple of searching skills and strategies, including the choices of search engines and formulation queries. In addition, the information seekers felt annoyed to have the difficulties in accessing the websites or the information unavailable during the searching process. The advanced information seeking would be conducted through Internet, travel books and magazines, friends, and travel agents.
The research results serve as a conceptual framework for developing the behavioral model of online travel information seeking for future studies.
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