1. Introduction
Though the outbreak and prevalence of COVID-19, pandemic has greatly influenced the tourism industry, with a sharp decline in international arrivals of 73% in 2020 and 71% in 2021 [1], it has also brought new opportunities for tourism industry recovery. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) announced on May 5 that international tourism is well on its way to returning to pre-pandemic levels, with twice as many people traveling during the first quarter of 2023 than in the same period of 2022 [1]. Asia and the Pacific accelerated its recovery with 54% of pre-pandemic levels [1], but this upward trend is set to accelerate now that most destinations, particularly China, have re-opened. According to the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), Thailand has received almost 6.5 million tourists in the first season of 2023, and there is an expectation of a continued increase in the second season. However, tourism industry recovery also faces some challenges, which mainly resulted from current high inflation and globally rising oil prices translating into higher transport and accommodations costs. In this case, data also reveals that tourists have more preferences to travel closer to home. Korea, as a near neighbor of China, has always been a popular travel destination among Chinese tourists, for which we expect a quick recovery of tourism industry between China and Korea soon after.
Among all the tourism approaches, nowadays, online booking is the main method for tourists to travel to other places. Tourists’ travel intentions are largely influenced by the perfectness of the travel website. Not only the booking process, but also before people make that decision to travel, they are greatly affected and attracted by some fancy short videos on TikTok or Instagram especially the youngsters. Unlike previous times when people went for some travel magazines and traditional ranking, they can easily get more information through the multiple online platforms which present the information in various formats. During the pandemic period, there are some new trends in the tourism industry: artificial intelligence and virtual reality are deeply applied in the tourism industry. VisitScotland (Scotland’ s national tourist organization) and Tourism Australia (the Australian government agency responsible for attracting visitors to Australia) have successfully created the VR experiences of countries’ famous attractions, which meets the new demand of visitors. Tourism industry is becoming more and more mature while the overloaded information also harms tourists. Some people cannot catch up with the fast developing technology and some others are putting the effort to distinguish the truth from the false information. In the past, tourism in Korea was more relied on China and Japan. After COVID-19, the importance of Chinese and Japanese tourists has decreased and tourists from many other countries count more and more to the Korean tourism. Korean government has been actively expanding into markets in Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. For this reason, we conduct this study to investigate how the tourism intention is affected by some variables and we specifically targeting at the foreigners who are living, studying or working in Korea. The study now regarding to the travel intention is mostly about how the reviews and comments in the travel websites influence traveling intention. Some researchers also use the TAM model but lack of external variables which take the new changes happened in the tourism industry into consideration.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Technology Acceptance Model
Ever since 1920s, the rapid gross of computer science have made a great change on the traditional mode of operation, which prompts the management efficiency as well as bring higher economic profit for the organization. However, investment in technology is always expensive, so the corporations has to do the tradeoff between the cost and revenue. Only when the technology is accepted by most of the employees can the implement of new technology creates the positive profit for the corporation. So the research about the acceptance of technology has become a key issue in the field of computer science and information system. Among all of them, there are several well-known and representative theory: TRA (Theory of Reasoned Acton), TPB (Theory of Planned Behavior) and TAM ( Technology Acceptance Model). The three models are widely applied in various academic fields. Though the models have some limitations, other extended models and theories are derived, such as TAM2 and UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology), which all improved original models in some ways. In this study, I will introduce the widely used TAM and TAM2, which take external variables and social influences into consideration, to conduct my analysis.
TAM model is initially proposed by Davis when using the TRA to investigate individual’s acceptance of computer science and technology, in order to explain and predict factors that influence the individuals acceptance of information system. There are six main variables in the TAM in a broad sense: perceived usefulness(PU), perceived ease of use(PE), behavior attitude(A), behavior intention(I), behavior(B) and external variables(EV). As model shows, individuals behavior is determined by behavior intention and behavior intention is controlled by behavior attitude and perceived usefulness.
2.2 Perceived Risk
Aside from perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, here we introduce the variable perceived risk. Risk perception is the subjective judgment that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. Risk perceptions often differ from statistical assessments of risk since are affected by a wide range of affective (emotions, feelings, moods, etc.), cognitive (gravity of events, media coverage, risk-mitigating measures, etc.), contextual (framing of risk information, availability of alternative information sources, etc.), and individual (personality traits, previous experience, age, etc.) factors. The perceived risk is generally ignored by past TAM studies [2]. Other researchers also used the perceived risk added TAM model to analyze. [3] examine the relationship between six dimensions of consumers’ perceived risks and consumers’ online purchase intentions, which are financial risk, product risk, security risk, time risk, social risk and psychological risk. And found that in electronic commerce activities, five factors of perceived risk have a significant negative influence on consumer online purchase intention, while social risk was found to be insignificant. [4] applied this variable into the UTAUT model when exploring the factors affect adoption intention of electric vehicles in India and conclude that perceived risk negatively affects adoption intention of electric vehicles.
2.3 Trust
Trust is another main and important variables other than perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, especially in the e-commerce. In the whole procedure of e-commerce, uncertainty is everywhere and it’s not enough if we only use the limited number of variables in the original model to analyze and research. To better improve the explanatory power of the TAM model in the field of e-commerce, scholars introduce the variable of trust into research. And according to some research, the trust variable is the most widely used and applied factors in the extended TAM models. [5] found that consumer trust is as important to online commerce as widely accepted TAM use-antecedents, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. [6] considered transaction and environment character and combined perceived risk and other four variables into an integrated model. And through empirical analysis, he concluded that trust is the directly determined variable of trading intention and trust directly determined trading intention, perceived risk, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. [7] found that initial trust beliefs were significantly influenced by initial trust bases such as company reputation, structural assurance, and trusting stance, and initial trust beliefs indirectly influenced the first purchase intention through consumer attitude. [8] measured both general trust and specific trust. Regression analysis results show that general trust, trusting the hotel and perceived usefulness of the brochure were positively and significantly related to booking intentions.
2.4 Information Quality
Information quality refers to the accuracy, completeness, clarity, comprehensibility, usefulness, and reliability of information system data outputs. Many evidence can be found that the quality of the information conveyed to consumers has great influence on consumers’ purchasing experiences and purchasing intention. [9] propose perceived information quality (PIQ) as a factor of perceived risk and trusting beliefs, which will directly affect intention to use the inter-organizational data exchanges. [10] empirically analyzes an extended UTAUT2 model that augments information quality to identify the determinants of continuous use intention for food delivery software applications. And found that information quality had an indirect effect on continuous use intention via performance expectancy. [11] noticed the asymmetry of tourism information and indicate that the quality of social media information positively affects travel intention and self-congruity and trust mediates the relationship between the quality of social media information and travel intention. [12] analyze consumers’ decision when purchasing food products through O2O commerce and found that information quality has impact on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. [13] especially investigate the virtual reality related information quality and found that two key attributes of VR travel, sense and information quality, were identified and found to positively influence tourists’ flow experience.
2.5 Personal Innovativeness
Technology advances almost happens every day. And how these effective technologies being accepted by users is partly depends on users’ personal innovativeness. According to a study [14] conducted in USA, researcher found that user personal innovativeness as measured by personal innovativeness in information technology and perceived usefulness, the determinants of initial adoption, remain as strong determinants of user continuance intention. Personal innovativeness in information technology also remains as the antecedent of perceived ease of use. [15] found that personal innovativeness acts as a moderator between negative valence and behavioral intention when they investigate the intention to use facial recognition or payments. Indian scientists [16] also found that personal innovativeness have a positive and significant influence on consumer attitude to adopt mobile payment system.
2.6 Online Booking Intention
A literature review shows that there are three antecedents of online travel purchase: customer characteristic, channel characteristic, website and product characteristic. [17] There are many studies related to tourism online booking and purchasing intention in different countries. [18] especially investigate the role of trust when booking online in Taiwan, proving that there is a significant and positive relationship between perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. [19] combined user experience and perceived distrust in to UTAUT model and find out that there is a cross-cultural differences between developed country and developing country. [20] concerns that traditional TAM model lacks self-regulatory and motivational variables, so personal innovativeness and perceived risk are added into analyzing model. [21] uses SOR model and concludes that high information quality on the website acts as a partial mediator which promotes consumers to form their trust towards online travel agencies and then affect continuous usage intention.
3. Modeling and Hypothesis
Based on the literature review above, we construct the analysis model and show in the following figure. We consider all the three antecedetns and combine them with TAM model. Therefor, trust, information quality and personal innovativeness are viewed as external variables. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived risk are assumed to affect on intention.
(Figure 1) Research Model
And all the hypotheses are listed below:
H1: Trust has positive effect on perceived usefulness.
H2: Information quality has positive effect on perceived usefulness.
H3: Personal innovativeness has positive effect on perceived usefulness.
H4: Trust has positive effect on perceived ease of use.
H5: Information quality has positive effect on perceived ease of use.
H6: Personal innovativeness has positive effect on perceived ease of use.
H7: Trust has negative effect on perceived risk.
H8: Information quality has negative effect on perceived risk.
H9: Personal innovativeness has negative effect on perceived risk.
H10: Perceived usefulness has positive effect on intention.
H11: Perceived ease of use has positive effect on the intention.
H12: Perceived risk has negative effect on the intention.
First we designed questionnaires with 5-point Likert scale with 5 representing strongly agree and 1 representing strongly disagree. All the participants were well-informed that the survey was conducted anonymously, ensuring that participants’ identities remained confidential throughout the study. We successfully collected 498 real and valid questionnaires out of 507 questionnaires through Google Forms and Wenjuanxing. Returned questionnaires are all targeted at foreigners who have the experiences traveling to Korea or currently live and study in Korea. Following are some results about sample analysis. Descriptive analysis, valid test and reliability test are conducted first to ensure the data is qualified enough for further analysis. And then, we use the structural equation method analysis method through AMOS.
Apparently, most of the people questioned are 18 to 45 years old, which corresponds to the user profile of tourism e-commerce websites.
(Table 1) Descriptive Analysis
For reliability test, we use Cronbach's Alpha index. Cronbach's Alpha is the most important method to test if a questionnaire is designed to be reliable. By using SPSS, we calculated the Cronbach's Alpha as shown in Table 3. Each of the variables has Cronbach's Alpha larger than 0.8, implying a good reliability of all the perceived variables.
(Table 2) Reliability Test
A validity test, is a method used to determine whether a test or measurement instrument accurately measures what it is intended to measure. It assesses the extent to which a test or assessment tool measures the construct or concept it claims to measure. Table 3 shows some results of key index of validity test, which is within the ideal range. It means that the questionnaire is designed to be valid enough to conduct future analysis.
(Table 3) Validity Test
After the data are qualified in reliability test and validity test, structural equation model are constructed in Figure 2 and performed in AMOS. It is a statistical technique used for testing and estimating causal relationships between variables. Table 4 is the final results of the SEM analysis.
(Figure 2) SEM Analysis
(Table 4) SEM Results
Notes:*P<0.05; ***P<0.001.
It can be seen clearly that path coefficients for hypotheses 7,8,9 are negative and significant at 5% level. Hypothesis 12 is not verified by empirical research.
(Table 5) SEM Results
4. Conclusions
This study illustrates some variables that could have impact on the traveling intention towards Korea, based on the TAM model and data collected from some eligible foreigners. Though many other researches have discussed this topic before, this study takes new changes (variables such as information quality and perceived risk) into consideration and constructs an expanded TAM model, which give out some useful implications under new circumstances.
4.1 Results and Implications
As for the perceived usefulness, analysis shows that all three external variables have positive impact on perceived usefulness. It means that more trust with the e-commerce platform, higher information quality that tourism suppliers provide and higher personal innovativeness the consumers are, they believe the tourism online e-commerce systems are useful and efficient enough to enhance their work such as search touring information or book hotels. So does the perceived ease of use, with higher level of the three external variables, consumers get more freedom from difficulty and great effort in the process of planning a travel. While, they are negatively related to perceived risk. Less trust, lower information quality and lower personal innovativeness lead to more risks perceived by consumers. We can also see from the results that among the three external variables, personal innovativeness have strongest impact on the dependent variables.
Consistent with the assumption in the traditional TAM model, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use have positive impact on the final purchasing intention. However, intriguingly, our study reveals a non-significant relationship between perceived risk and booking intention. This outcome might seem counterintuitive at first, but a plausible explanation could be that modern consumers are increasingly willing to trade off perceived risks for the sake of convenience. As technology has been fast grown, some other traditional methods to book a travel ticket or hotel is not available nowadays. Online booking provides more information and options. For the those price-sentitive tourists, their decisions are affected by many marketing strategies. The relationship between perceived risks and final intention is not as apparent as this paper shows. Rewards, promotions, and price comparison may be the mediating factors between the two. Besides, different scales of online platform also results different level of perceived risk. People perceive less risk when using large and multinational platform than those small platforms only targeting at one specific country.
All the e-commerce travel companies and platforms which provide tourism services towards South Korea can be roughly divided into three categories based on their business scales: large, medium and small. The large e-commerce suppliers are mostly focus on business like hotel booking, air tickets and car rental, such as Booking.com. The medium scale travel suppliers are providing services such as group tour, semi-guided tour, attraction tickets, WiFi & SIM cards, restaurant booking. The small scale business almost provide the same services as medium scale platform but only covering a smaller part of users and customers. From this study, we can know some reasons why small platforms cannot be outstanding from the homogenized services. As a matter of fact, it is not because the service quality they provide is different. For example, the actual provider of a specific group tour behind the scene in Seoul is the same, medium business and small business are just acting as the role of agency. As this study shows, customers care more about their perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. They care more about if the interaction with the platform/website is easy and user-friendly, if the platform/website provide clear, well-classified and understandable tour information and layout. In this case, perceived risk is not the main consideration for consumers. Some concerns about safety of personal privacy and fraudulent charges when booking online is out of the determinant factors affecting their traveling intention towards Korea. Compared to smaller scale of business, medium and large e-commerce travel Apps/websites are always well-designed and have better human-computer interaction.
4.2 Suggestions
According to the latest news released by Ministry of Education in Korea, government aims to attract 0.3 millions [22] of international students to Korea and become the top ten world leading countries for study abroad by 2027. This project not only helps enhance global competitiveness in high-tech industries, but also brings Korea some side benefits such as stimulating regional economy. And a series of step-by-step strategies are supposed to released focusing on the education field. But for tourism supplier, it is a new chance which they should be readily prepared for and catch up with. Increased number of international students are expected to be the a large portion of tourists, which can bring continuously positive impact on the recovery or booming of Korea tourism industry. In this study, most of those questioned are international students, including undergraduate students and graduate students. From their point of view and based on all the data and analysis , we can give out some suggestions to the e-commerce industry and tourism service supplier. Tourism e-commerce suppliers should use multiple and proactive marketing strategies to promote their websites and platforms. The credibility of platforms can be increased through celebrity endorsements and KOL (Key Opinion Leader) promotion. Establishing and enhancing trust in the online booking platform is crucial for tourism service providers. This can be achieved through transparent communication, secure payment methods, and reliable customer support. Through insight into consumers’ demands, they should improve the quality of information converted to consumers and by applying artificial intelligence, they should provide personalized recommendations to consumers. For those smaller suppliers, most of them are originated and targeting at tourists coming from their local country. they can also collaborate with local top platforms to better bring out consumers’ buy-local preferences.
4.3 Further Study Issues
As we mentioned before, the relationship between perceived risk and booking intention is ambiguous. Further study can dig deeply into these two. Further investigation can segment business scales and add mediating factors.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by Kyonggi University's Graduate Research Assistantship 2023.
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