The Effect of Word of Mouth Networks and Facebook Fan Pages on Travel Decisions

• Main Authors: Wan-Yun Wei, 魏婉筠
• Other Authors: Shu-Fen Tseng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/73379478737573191170

碩士 === 元智大學 === 資訊社會學碩士學位學程 === 101 === Currently, the number of social networking sites is increasing rapidly. Facebook is the most popular one of those. Its affordances not only allow individuals to maintain and reach more relationships but offer them opportunities to participate in favorite pages. Does the information diffusion on the integrating social networks and favorite pages of Faceook differ than traditional web pages using one-way communication to users? Thus, the purposes of this study are to explore (1) how the individuals’ network density and network heterogeneity of interests on Facebook influence their source credibility; (2) how the individuals’ perceptions of interpersonal source credibility influence their travel decisions; (3) how the individuals’ perceptions of institutional-based fan pages on Facebook influence their travel decisions. In order to answer the questions above, this study selected a travel fan page on Facebook and investigated their members by employing the Internet survey method in April, 2013. The survey successfully interviewed 93 respondents. In analysis, this study first used multiple regression to estimate how network density and network heterogeneity influence interpersonal source credibility and then utilized multinomial logistic regression to estimate how the interpersonal source credibility and institutional-based fan pages on Facebook influence travel decisions. The results indicate that network density and network heterogeneity are not relevant to interpersonal source credibility. Both interpersonal source credibility and institutional-based fan pages on Facebook are positively related to travel decisions. In other words, it is important to know the expertise and trustworthiness effect of interpersonal source credibility when exploring how the information of fan pages on Facebook influences an individual’s decisions. Finally, the study not only contributes to the word of mouth theory but also provides practitioners with a substantial guidance of Internet marketing. Keywords：social network, source credibility, institutional-based trust, travel decisions