“I want to share a beautiful journey with my friends!” — Chinese Millennial travelers’ sharing of travel videos via social media and their tourism experiences

In Web 2.0, the consuming and sharing of user-generated travel videos are becoming increasingly popular among Chinese Millennial travelers. However, research regarding the motivations to create and share personal video recorded travel content is scarce, and understanding of the power of such videos in influencing tourism experiences is inadequate. The purpose of the current study was to explore the reasoning and social justifications of tourists to engage in the production and sharing of travel videos and how an involvement of social media practices in everyday life experiences extended to tourism contexts. Using phenomenology, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 tourists who had experiences watching, creating and posting travel videos via social media. Data were analyzed following the “phenomenological attitude”—eidetic reduction. Findings suggest that altruistic, hedonistic and social-related motivations are the three primary reasons for tourists to watch, produce and share travel videos, and the spillover impacts exhibited from everyday life, especially the impacts of social media use, have clearly extended to tourism context, resulting in the blurring of boundaries between tourism experiences and everyday life experiences, the private life and the public life as well as the unlocking of three stages of tourism experiences.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Recreation, Sport, and Tourism

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Du, Xin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Santos, Carla Almeida
• Liechty, Toni

• Social media
• travel videos
• tourism experiences
• Chinese
• Millennials

Statement dc:rights

• copyright 2019 Xin Du

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105059

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/105059