An Investigation of the Intrinsic Motivational Factors that Affect Intention to Continue Using Smart Tourism Applications

Guo, Jin (2022) An Investigation of the Intrinsic Motivational Factors that Affect Intention to Continue Using Smart Tourism Applications. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

Since the 1980s, the focus of research in mobile application has been placed on the users’ intentions and behaviours toward initial acceptance of information system. However, with further research, more and more researchers are beginning to realise the importance of intention to continuance usage. With information and communication technology (ICT) and the internet developed, mobile applications have become a topic of interest for academics focusing on the tourism industry. Smart tourism applications is a new tourism information system in recent years, referring to the tourism applications running on smartphones, tablets or other mobile devices. With the rapid rise of the popularity of smart tourism, rapid development of online travel and mobile intelligent terminals and mobile internet the current smart tourism application market is in full swing, various types of smart tourism applications have come out. Smart tourism applications use innovative information and communication technologies (ICT). Their purpose is to provide more efficient and convenient services when consumers travel to in different places as well as real-time information to enable a smarter travel environment. Consequently, there is a need for research about what factors influence consumers to intention to continue using smart technology, as well as about their perception of the benefits from extensively adopting this technology. Although a lot is known about the continue intention of information systems within a range of consumer contexts, little is known about continue intention, or the intrinsic factors that influence continue intention within the context of smart tourism.
This study aims to close that research gap. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Self-determination theory (SDT) were chosen as the basic model to understand consumers’ intention to continue usage. By integrating the substantial literature on user intention to continue usage in different research contexts within a consideration of the factors influence use smart tourism application, this research aims to investigate intrinsic factors influencing consumers’ intention to continue using smart tourism applications. The purpose of this research is to develop and test a conceptual model that explains the constructs that influence consumers’ intention to continue using mobile applications in smart tourism. The data for this research was gathered via online questionnaire that sought to capture the perception of 421 consumers located in China. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling have been used to analyse this primary data.The findings reveal that consumers’ perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and inertia affects have significant positive influence in their intention to continue using smart tourism applications, while perceived autonomy, and perceived competence have indirect effect on intention to continue using smart tourism applications.
The study contributes to our knowledge on intention to continue usage in smart tourism applications in a Chinese context. The study indicates that the TAM partially explains smart tourism applications. However, the most important factors were partly the new factors identified to SDT, as well as the intrinsic motivation factors particular to the smart mobile application context. Additionally, practical recommendations are suggested to help the service providers to design appropriate marketing strategies and deliver corresponding activities based on the identified factors in China. Finally, this study opens up opportunities for future research to other domains of smart tourism technologies.

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