Digital Journeys: The Power of Travel Vloggers in Shaping Destination Perceptions

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the impact of source characteristics and perceived content quality on eWOM behaviors, visit intention and attitude toward destination in the context of travel vlogging. More specifically, it sheds light on these concepts by carefully examining how specific travel vloggers influence viewers’ perceptions of high-quality content and how this, respectively, shapes their beliefs and affects their intention to visit a particular destination. It also explores not only how certain source characteristics result in people’s engagement in eWOM but also how eWOM engagement is linked to attitude toward and visit intention. Our total sample of 180 participants allowed us to gain interesting insights, which we further analyzed using a quantitative approach. Precisely, our findings suggest that certain source characteristics, popularity, expertise, homophily, and trustworthiness, affect perceived content quality, but also reveal that content quality has a significant impact on visit intention as well as attitude toward a destination. Additionally, our results confirm that source homophily along with source popularity positively influence eWOM participation and that attitude toward a destination has a positive significant relationship with eWOM engagement and opinion giving. These paper’s findings aspire to essentially contribute to the existing knowledge regarding travel vlogging and display how this information can be further employed to promote destinations and travel experiences.