The role of elaboration likelihood routes in relationships between user-generated content and willingness to pay more

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of social media sharing on tourists’ willingness to pay more (WPM) at destinations. The moderating effects of tourists’ preferred route in decision-making or obtaining information (i.e. central or peripheral routes) were also examined. Design/methodology/approach: A theoretical model was developed and tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Moderating effects of central and peripheral routes were tested using PLS multi-group analysis. Data were collected from 478 tourists in Antalya, Turkey, a sea, sun and sand tourist destination. Findings: Findings indicate that importance attached to participant sharing (IPS) and importance attached to non-participant sharing (INPS) are significant antecedents of tourists’ WPM intentions. Moderating effects of tourists’ preferred route in decision-making reveal that the effect of IPS on WPM intention is more influential for those with high central route preferences than those with low central route preferences. While the effects of INPS and IPS on WPM intention is more determinative for those with higher peripheral route preferences. Practical implications: Although it is known by the practitioners that consumer-generated contents are important, this research suggests and supports that these contents trigger tourists to pay higher prices. Originality/value: How WPM is motivated by others’ social media sharing was not very clear in the literature. Therefore, this research gap was addressed in part by examining the social media sharing structure in terms of whether others posted on organization-related sites or on personal sites.