Lost in digital world: Chinese tourists in Morocco A qualitative research on tourists’ post-travel perception of UGC credibility

Currently, travel-related UGC is widely used in tourists’ decision-making process. These contents are perceived as credible sources since they are customer-oriented and independent, furthermore, have significant influence on travelers’ buying behavior. Multiple studies concentrated on discussing UGC credibility in travelers’ decision-making, namely “pre-consuming” process, However, tourists’ perception of UGC credibility is permutable as they might experience something different or unexpected during the trip. Therefore, it is then important to unravel the relationship between tourists’ perceived credibility of UGC and their actual travel experience. This exploratory research focuses on discussing consumers’ post-travel perceptions of UGC credibility based on one practical case about Chinese tourists in Morocco. And the research question of this study is “How tourists’ actual travel experiences affect their perceptions of the travel-related UGC credibility?” In order to answer the question, this study employed a combined research method of qualitative content analysis and in-depth interview. By coding 40 user-generated articles on Chinese Internet and interviewing nine Chinese tourists, research found that the travelers with dissatisfied and mismatched travel experience showed less perceived credibility on UGC, whereas the ones with satisfied and matched travel experience showed their consistent attitude towards UGC. Another finding is that travelers still accept the reference value of UGC and choose to use them in future trip planning, even though they show less perceived credibility on UGC. Meanwhile, they decide to adjust their UGC consuming behavior in the future. Additionally, in line with the previous theories, the study discovered travel-related UGC helped destination build three kinds of image: “Cognitive”, “affective” and “conative”, while the first two were more salient than the third one. Such contents described travel destinations in five angles, “natural resource”, “attractions”, “amenity”, “accommodation” and “cultural activities”. For travelers’ consuming behavior on UGC, research found consumers paid attention on the content quality in four dimensions: “Completeness”, “accuracy”, “authenticity” and “objectivity”. Lastly, travelers’ two information needs from UGC, “functional” and “hedonic” were also proved by this study, furthermore, the “functional” information needs was the most important element.