2021, Vol.45, No.6

Journal of Tourism Sciences 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 2.7

pISSN : 1226-0533 / eISSN : 2713-6388
https://journal.kci.go.kr/JTS

Social media has become a place where travelers express their emotions and record travel experiences. However, there has been little research on sharing travel experiences on social media and happiness. The purpose of this study is to understand why people share travel experiences on social media and is to propose a conceptual framework of the relationship between sharing travel experiences on social media and happiness. A systematic quantitative literature review method was applied to explore research trends in sharing travel experiences on social media. Specifically, from the SCOPUS database, a total of 120 articles were extracted followed by the PRISMA checklist. Then, they were coded with several categories, such as publication, keywords, the research contexts, and variables, and were finally exported to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and analyzed. Results of the systematic qualitative litterateur review suggest that sharing travel experiences on social media positively influences travel satisfaction and enhances travelers’ self-esteem and happiness. Theoretically, this study developed a new theoretical framework on the relationship between sharing travel experience on social media and happiness. In particular, the framework indicates that even though individuals motivation of sharing travel expediences are different, they may experiences either Hedonia or Eudaimonia by doing so. Results of this study also imply that social media could make practical functions such as advertising travel destination and monitoring current and potential travelers' behaviors.

As the world is struggling with the coronavirus (COVID-19), it is an important research task to understand the negative impact of the disease on the tourism industry with similar examples from the past and to prepare countermeasures for it. This study examines the effects of tourist attention to Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) on international tourism demand for South Korea during 2009– 2016. Search volume indices for MERS in Google and Baidu were employed as a proxy for the tourist attention paid to MERS. Using a structural vector autoregression model with block exogeneity restrictions, we set up tourist attention to MERS as an exogenous variable and control for endogeneity between macroeconomic variables and tourist arrivals. Our results show that the tourist attention paid to MERS has detrimental effects on tourist arrivals and its effects are heterogeneous across visitor countries. While the negative effects of tourist attention to MERS on U.S. and European tourist arrivals were moderate, this negative information effect was more pronounced when the countries of visitors are closer to Korea, such as Japan and China. Future research directions and limitations of the study was discussed at the end of the study.

This study explores the determinants influencing travel audience during the COVID-19 outbreak. The specific purposes of this study are as follows: 1) to verify TriRisk - a risk perception scale proposed by Ferrer et al.(2016), 2) to confirm the determinants of travel avoidance intentions along with demographic variables by deriving the concept of perceived severity and risk perception, and 3) to investigate the interaction effects of the travel frequency and the old and weak. Data were collected through an online survey from July 26, 2020 to August 7, 2020 when travel restriction measures and social distancing policy were enforced in South Korea due to COVID-19. A questionnaire was administered to those aged 20 and over, and 279 samples were included in data analysis. Using a binary logistic regression model, the authors confirmed that gender, education level, area of residence, affective risk perception, and perceived physical severity positively influenced travel avoidance intentions. Additionally, the old and weak and travel frequency exerted positive interaction effects between gender and travel avoidance intentions. This study provides academic contributions to the field by applying TriRisk perception to convey better knowledge of the decision making of travel avoidance in the pandemic era. It also offers practical implications by suggesting effective communication strategies tailored to target markets.