The Effects of Social Media on Music-induced Tourism: A Case of Korean Pop Music and Inbound Tourism to Korea

With the rapid spread of social media, video-sharing social media like YouTube has emerged as a consumption and distribution channel for entertainment goods such as music videos and movie trailers. In tourism research, there has been a lot of research of how the visual media such as movies and soap operas induced tourism. However, no studies have attempted to examine the role of social media as a music consumption channel and its impact on tourism. Expanding a body of media-induced tourism, we analysed the impact of video-sharing social media on music-induced tourism with a case of Korean pop music and inbound tourism to Korea. Developing a Web-crawler, we collected YouTube users' comments data on 166 Korean pop music video clips which were released from 2009 to 2012 with over 1 million view counts. Controlling many of the determinants of tourism and analysing country-by-country impact of YouTube comments with the panel data, we found that engagement of Korean pop music video clips on YouTube is a significant predictor for the flow of inbound tourists to Korea.