A business model adoption based on tourism innovation: Applying agratification theory to mobile applications

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding of Tourism Innovation by using a Uses and Gratifica-tion Theory model to investigate tourist intention to visit a city after reading other users'valuations of thedestination on Mobile Applications.The Uses and Gratification Theory (U&G) model was adapted to investigate the factors which influence tour-ist intention to visit a city. Satisfaction and Tourism Experience were added as external variables to the U&Gmodel. The original Convenience construct for mobile tourism applications was changed to Mobile Conve-nience for this study.A survey was carried out to investigate the factors which influence tourist intention to visit a City. 261 userswith different nationalities were asked about their experiences and feelings when using Runnin'City, whichwas the mobile tourism application used in this study. The results were analyzed with Partial Least SquaresStructural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). All the relationships of U&G were supported, except for Informationfor Tourism Experience.Self-Expression was found to be especially relevant and was moderated by Entertainment, Information andMobile Convenience which in turn influence Satisfaction, Tourism Experience and Intention to visit a City.The Gender and Running frequency variables were also investigated using multi-group analysis. The influ-ence of Mobile Convenience on Satisfaction was seen to be moderated by Gender, and the relationships ofInformation and Entertainment on satisfaction are moderated by Running Frequency.The results obtained with the proposed changes in the U&G model will be very useful for academics and alsofor designers and developers of mobile tourism apps as they show the special role played by Self-Expressionand Entertainment as relevant factors for the success of a mobile tourism app.