Chapter 4: Analysis of the Results
4.1 Descriptive Analysis …
4.1.1 Sample Structure
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CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The survey questionnaires were distributed as mentioned in chapter 3, from May 24th to June 15th of the year 2013 during different times of the day to increase participation. As for the sampling method, participants were chosen using purposive sampling. After joining the Facebook groups stated in chapter 3, responses from 150 different people from the target (international students in Taiwan) were received. The statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS 20.0 to examine the data as well as to test the hypotheses. The following section discusses the results and findings, as well as the validity of the previously stated hypothesis.
4.1 Descriptive Analysis
Before going to the analysis of the hypothesis, an overview of the sample and other relevant information will be addressed in the following section.
4.1.1 Sample structure
Out of the 150 respondents, 87 (58%) were females and 63 (42%) were males. The Facebook groups where the sample was taken from had members from both sexes; however, as the results show, females were more willing to respond the survey which was uploaded several times in different days and hours during the period of gathering responses (two weeks). This could be an indicator of how the gender variable affects the use and active participation in social media. This can be expanded to the virtual sphere of the Internet. In this case, women showed more interest than men in answering the online survey.
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Table 4.1 Demographic information
1.Gender Number Percentage
Male 63 42%
University/College 60 41%
Master 75 51%
5.How many trips have you made during the last 12 months
1 – 3 37 25%
4 - 6 73 48%
7 or more 40 27%
Total 150 100%
Note: Missing values correspond to unanswered questions.
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Regarding the trustworthiness towards information found in social media, the majority of respondents (both male and female) showed a neutral-to-agreeable opinion (86.6%) towards data found in social media. However, by running a T-test on SPSS to compare gender differences in trustworthiness towards social media, there were no statistical differences between men and women.
There is a tendency to agree that the contents in social media are trustworthy,
however, there is a gap that separates those who agree from those who strongly agree on this statement. This shows that, even though participants trust the contents to a certain level, they are aware that the information found in social media cannot be trusted completely. Further on, we also analyze how age and trustworthiness are related. Regarding the differences in age between the participants, most of the people who answered the survey were of ages between 21 to 30 years old (82%). This is because the majority of the survey recipients were
university students that are either on exchange programs or studying a Master’s degree in Taiwan. The second most prevalent group is that of people from 31 to 35 years old. As for the relation between age and their perception towards Social Media contents trustworthiness, the following chart shows where we can find statistical significance between groups:
Table 4.2 Trustworthiness differences on social media by age
N Mean F Sig.
15 – 20 years old 7 4.8571 2.346 .044
21 – 25 years old 61 5
26 – 30 years old 49 5.3191
31 – 35 years old 14 5.0714
36 – 40 years old 8 5.3750
Older than 40 years old 9 6.6250
Total 148 5.2168
Scheffe Test
21 – 25 years old & Older than 40 years old .066
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There are significant differences (p=.066) between two of the age groups: those in the 21 – 25 years old category, and those that are older than 40 years old. The majority of people surveyed chose neutral-to-agree choices, concentrating the 86% of the sample population. It is interesting to point the younger audience tend to trust more in the contents found in social media. Those in an age range between 21 to 35 have less credibility perception towards the information but still maintain certain level of trustworthiness.
Regarding the educational level of the respondents, those who are currently studying at university or doing a Master’s degree hold the majority of the sample population (92%), followed by people studying a PHD (6%). Since the respondents are primarily young people, it is also no surprise to find out that 91% of them are single, while only 9% are already married.
Going further in understanding the target, when asked if they consider themselves frequent travelers, 76% answered ‘Yes’, leaving 24% as non-frequent travelers. This could be a very subjective question, after all, what does ‘frequent’ stands for? In order to have a better understanding, the next question deal with the number of trips made during the last year.
Even though some of the respondents previously answered that they do not consider themselves as frequent travelers, we can see that the range of people that have made from 4 to more trips in the last year sum up to 75% of all the respondents (this range of trips is
considered by the researcher as being a ‘frequent traveler’). The rest of them have made at least one trip in the last twelve months. Now, regarding the use of the Internet when planning a trip, the responses were as follow:
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Figure 4.3 Use of Internet when planning a trip
The vast majority of the respondents go online to look for information when planning a trip (98%). This shows that the target chosen for this study is a heavy user of the Internet and relies on this media to gather information. As previously seen in the demographic information, this is a young audience (from 21 to 30 years old) with superior studies (98%) which makes it easier to understand why they use the Internet not just for entertainment, but also to gather information for different purposes (such as academia or travel planning).
Following up, when asked if they go specifically to social media to look for information regarding travel planning, 93% confirmed that they indeed visit these sort of websites. To do a further analysis on which social media they use in the different stages of travel planning (before, during and after the trip), the results will follow after a quick description of each of the social media mentioned in the question:
A) Facebook
An online social networking service. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, and receive automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join
82%
11%
5%
1%
1%
Almost always Often Sometimes Rarely Never
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common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other
characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors.
B) YouTube
A video-sharing website on which users can upload, view and share a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.
Unregistered users can watch videos, while registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos.
C) Twitter
An online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters known as "tweets". With over 500 million registered users as of 2012, it generates over 340 million tweets daily and handles over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the SMS of
the Internet." Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of apps for mobile devices
D) TripAdvisor
A travel website that assists customers in gathering travel information, posting reviews and opinions of travel-related content and engaging in interactive travel forums.
TripAdvisor claims to be the most popular and largest travel community in the world, with more than 32 million members and over 100 million reviews and opinions of hotels,
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restaurants, attractions and other travel-related businesses. TripAdvisor was an early adopter of user-generated content. The website services are free to users, who provide most of the content, and the website is supported by an advertising business model.
E) LinkedIn
A social networking website for people in professional occupations. As
of 2013, LinkedIn has 178.4 million visitors globally. One purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have some level of relationship, called “connections”. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection.
F) Wikipedia
A collaboratively edited, multilingual, free Internet encyclopedia. Wikipedia's 30 million articles in 286 languages, including over 4.2 million in the English Wikipedia, are written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone having access to the site. It is the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, ranking seventh globally among all websites as of July 2013, and having an estimated 365 million readers worldwide
G) Instagram
An online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services A distinctive feature is that it confines photos to a square shape, similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images, in contrast to the 16:9 aspect ratio now typically used by mobile device cameras. In 2012, it was announced that over 30 million
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accounts were set up on Instagram, and that58 photographs were being uploaded and a new user was being gained each second. The total number of photographs uploaded had exceeded one billion.
H) Couchsurfing
A website that offers its users hospitality exchange and social networking services.
The website provides a platform for members to "surf" (stay for free) on couches by staying as a guest at a host's home, host travelers, or join an event. In March 2013, the website had 6 million members in 100,000 cities worldwide
Now, after defining each of the social media websites that were stated in the questions, we will proceed to define the stages of travel planning and which social media were used the most during each of the stages. First, the use of social media websites before the trip is done in the planning process.
Figure 4.4 Social media websites used before the trip
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Before the trip takes place, most of the surveyed people answered that they go to Wikipedia (76%) to look for information on the place they are going to visit. The second most used social media website is TripAdvisor. People go to tripadvisor.com to look for more detailed information regarding the place they want to visit, get feedback and read reviews from people that have already been to the place. On the third and fourth place we have Facebook and YouTube. Facebook, being a social network, can be accessed to interact with people and ask directly for their opinions or for information. As for YouTube, being an audiovisual platform, it allows the user to gather more information regarding the place to be visited and to actually see the place itself. Audiovisual material can be more helpful in getting an idea of how the place one is going to visit looks like and if there are also videos that promote the most prominent tourist attractions.
The choices of social media for the ‘Before the trip’ stage point that the respondents go to websites that can provide them with the information required beforehand to visit a particular place.
Figure 4.5 Social media websites used during the trip
5%‧
While the person is travelling, the choices for using social media vary. In this stage, Facebook becomes the number one choice (81%), mostly for sharing with others their current location and to post pictures of their current trip. Second comes TripAdvisor, which indicates that the traveler still requires information and feedback from other travelers regarding the place he/she is visiting. Following comes Instagram. Again, during the trip, the “sharing”
element is the predominant one, in contrast with the first one, where “searching” for information was the priority in their use of social media.
Figure 4.6 Social Media websites used after the trip
Finally, after the trip is completed, the respondents choose in their majority Facebook as their favorite social media website. Following up, respondents were asked to also state the purposes for using social media regarding travel planning. The graphic shows that users go to social media mostly to share their experiences and photos, and to keep in touch with their friends. Searching for information regarding the travel plan is also relevant. People do not go online to search for tour packages and ideas for accommodation were also lower.
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Figure 4.7 Purposes for using social media regarding travel planning
Analyzing the three stages of the travel planning shows that, before the holiday trip, respondents searched for ideas of where to go (Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, Facebook). During the trip, respondents primarily used social media to stay connected with their friends and to a lesser extent to find holiday related information (Facebook, Instagram, TripAdvisor). After the trip, social media are predominantly used for the purpose of sharing experiences and photos within their social network (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram). Providing comments and reviews about the holiday experience after the trip were rather low (Trip Advisor). This shows how respondents can be active users of social media by gathering information and sharing their experiences, however, when it comes to giving feedback to people outside their social network, their interest goes down.
It is interesting how people chose Facebook as one of their sources for searching travelling information. Looking closely, this means that feedback regarding travel
experiences can be found on this social media through their social network. It is possible,
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Search for ideas on where to go Keep in touch with friends
during my trip
To share my experiences and photos with my friends
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then, to make a connection between the stages of “after the trip” and “before the trip”. The fact that people share their experiences mostly with their peers (e.g. through Facebook) and not with strangers (e.g. through TripAdvisor) can be asserted, explaining the reasons for people to visit Facebook for searching information purposes and the low rate of sharing information after the trip on websites such as TripAdvisor.
4.2 Testing of Hypothesis
In this section, the previously stated hypotheses were tested. To do so, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS Statistics) program was used to validate, analyze and describe the relations between the variables that shape each of the hypotheses.
Hypothesis 1: The greater the perceived usefulness of social media, the more likely an individual will recommend his or her friends and family to look for travel related information on social media.
Multiple regression analyses were conducted in examining the influences of
independent variables on the two dependent variables. The results were presented as follows:
The results of the regression analysis indicate that “Usefulness of social media”
contributed positively to the respondents’ willingness to recommend social media to their family and friends as a source for travel-related information (beta=.300, p<.01).That is, the more a respondent perceived the social media as a useful tool, the more willing he or she was to recommend social media to family and friends as a source for travel-related information.
Meanwhile, consumer’s gender, age, education and frequency of travel had no influences on the dependent variable at all. (See Table 4.8)
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Table 4.8 Recommend use of Social Media
Dependent variable:
Recommend use of social media
Multiple R= .601 Adjusted R Square= .337
Note: *:p<.05, **:p<.01, ***:p<.001Hypothesis 2: The greater the perceived usefulness of social media, the more likely an individual will share his or her travel experiences.
For the analysis, the variable “Usefulness of social media” was still used as the predictor variable while holding demographic variables and frequency of travel as control variables; the dependent variable of this analysis was “Willingness to share travel experiences”
with others.
The results of the regression analysis showed that “Usefulness of social media” is related to the respondents’ willingness to share their travel experiences on social media (beta=.156, p<.01). None of the controlled variables showed any effects. The hypothesis was supported, which indicates greater perceived usefulness of social media about travel
information may enhance the person’s willingness to share his or her travel experiences with others online. The goal was to prove a direct relation between perceived levels of usefulness of travel-related data and the likelihood for this variable to affect the later decision of sharing this information in social media as feedback. Thus, hypothesis 2 is sustained. (See Table 4.9)
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Table 4.9 Share travel experiences
Dependent variable:
Multiple R= .314 Adjusted R Square= .065
Note: *:p<.05, **:p<.01, ***:p<.001Hypothesis 3: The greater the perceived trustworthiness in social media, the more likely an individual will be affected in his or her decision on travel plans.
This hypothesis attempts to examine the relationship between levels of
trustworthiness and how this affects the decision making process by the user. In this case, we analyzed whether trust in social media affects the users’ ultimate decision regarding travel planning as a whole. Further on, we will analyze how positive or negative comments affect users’ behavior regarding their decision in going or not going to some place that has been recommended (positive feedback) or discarded as a bad experience (negative comments).
Trustworthiness of social media affects the users’ perception of legitimacy towards the information found in social media (beta=.469, p<.01). This means that the more a person trusts in social media and its contents, the more likely he/she will feel influenced and
consider altering his/her travel plans using information found in social media as a valid information source. Thus, hypothesis 3 is sustained. Meanwhile, educational level was also found to negatively influenced the dependent variable (beta=-.469, p<.05), it indicates that those less educated consumers were more likely to be affected by social media in travel plan decision making. (See Table 4.10)
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Table 4.10 Trustworthiness on social media affects travel decision
Dependent variable:
Trustworthiness of social media
.469 5.104 **
Multiple R= .449 Adjusted R Square= .172
Note: *:p<.05, **:p<.01, ***:p<.001After establishing that trustworthiness affects the decision making process, we can also take a look into which type of comments, positive or negative, may affect the users’
travel plan decisions regarding whether or not to go to a specific place. First we analyze the effect of negative comments on the user’s decision making about travel plan. (See Table 4.11)
Table 4.11: Change in travel plans as a result of negative comments
Dependent variable:
Note: *:p<.05, **:p<.01, ***:p<.001Result from analysis indicates that negative comments was able to affect user’s decision making (beta=.194, p<.05). That is, the more the person trusts social media, the less likely he/she will go to a place that has negative comments from other users (beta=.194, p<.05). As for the impact of positive comments in affecting the users’ decision process, the
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result of the analysis indicates that the more the person trusts social media, the more likely he/she will go to a place that has positive comments from other users (beta=.391, p=<.01).
Table 4.12: Change in travel plans as a result of positive comments
Dependent variable: Positive
comments will affect me
Beta t Sig
(Constant) 5.431
Trustworthiness of social media
.391* 5.025 **
Adjusted R Square= .147
Note: *:p<.05, **:p<.01, ***:p<.001However, comparing the influences of both types of comments, it was found that positive comments seem to yield slightly greater impact than negative comments in affecting users’ decision of a travel destination. In other words, positive comments in social media have more influence power than negative ones.
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CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
The goal of this study was to find out the role of social media in the context of travel planning and how influential social media is in the consumer’s decision making process. As was stated, social media include a variety of websites that allow consumers to search for information and share their experiences with other users online. Consumers disseminate word-of-mouth because they had a gratifying or unpleasant experience with products or services and they need a way to express their joy or irritation (Dichter, 1966). However, social media can make online word-of-mouth more powerful. The study has provided evidence for the existence of information-search processes and the influences on consumer decision-making behaviors.
The three hypotheses that were used for this study were proven to be correct. As for the relation between usefulness of social media and willingness to recommend social media as a reliable source of information, the results of the analysis showed that people with high levels of satisfaction in social media will tend more to advice people in their social network
The three hypotheses that were used for this study were proven to be correct. As for the relation between usefulness of social media and willingness to recommend social media as a reliable source of information, the results of the analysis showed that people with high levels of satisfaction in social media will tend more to advice people in their social network