Understanding Tourists’ Social Networking Site (SNS) Intention with Regards to World Heritage Sites: The Role of Motivation and Overall Image

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I would like to congratulate authors for this interesting research.

As stated by them, with the growing sense of sustainability and environmental protection, World Heritage Sites (WHS) has become a trendy destination among tourists. To promote heritage destinations in South Korea via SNS platforms, the joint support from tourists to share their experiences should be emphasized.

In order to fill different gaps in the literature review, this study aims to develop and test a theoretical framework for tourists' SNS intentions after ending their tourism experience. More specifically, this research tries to answer the following objectives: (i) to identify the activation process of SNS intention for sharing WHS visit experience; (ii) to determine the role of travel motivations and overall image in affecting WHS tourists’ SNS intention; (iii) to examine the impact of diverse dimensions of motivations on evoking WHS tourists’ SNS intention.

The literature review section is divided in many sub-sections that are well discussed and based on very authors.

Therefore, the proposed hypotheses from this study are all well supported.

Methodologically, authors have created an online questionnaire developed via the platform SurveyMonkey and based on six variables with 22 items using five-point Likert-type scales.

The collected sample contains not only international visitors but also domestic travelers. Questionnaires were applied from early September 230 to mid-October 2023, and a total of valid 238 responses were collected.

These answers were analysed through the analysis tools SPSS 23 and Stata 18 were applied to conduct data analysis. More specifically, authors have used descriptive statistics to provide the demographic composition among the respondents. Second, Cronbach's Alpha (α) values for all constructs were tested to check their reliability. Third, CFA was utilized to examine the constructs’ credibility and validity. Lastly, SEM was examined to determine the efficiency of the proposed model and hypotheses as well as to identify the indirect effects within the mode

Although there is a good discussion, there are no conclusions section. This should be corrected or at least rename the actual sections.

This study has shown that cultural, travel, and social motives lead to building overall destination image and also that the overall image also affects SNS intention into a positive and significant effect.

Authors have consulted an impressive number of references balancing older ones with very recent ones. This is important not only for readers to better understand the theoretical discussion but also to have a full understanding of the different perspectives.

Abstract doesn’t say anything about the sample size or methodology. I suggest to correct this situation.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

I would like to congratulate authors for this interesting research.

As stated by them, with the growing sense of sustainability and environmental protection, World Heritage Sites (WHS) has become a trendy destination among tourists. To promote heritage destinations in South Korea via SNS platforms, the joint support from tourists to share their experiences should be emphasized.

In order to fill different gaps in the literature review, this study aims to develop and test a theoretical framework for tourists' SNS intentions after ending their tourism experience. More specifically, this research tries to answer the following objectives: (i) to identify the activation process of SNS intention for sharing WHS visit experience; (ii) to determine the role of travel motivations and overall image in affecting WHS tourists’ SNS intention; (iii) to examine the impact of diverse dimensions of motivations on evoking WHS tourists’ SNS intention.

The literature review section is divided in many sub-sections that are well discussed and based on very authors.

Therefore, the proposed hypotheses from this study are all well supported.

Response: We highly appreciate your encouragement and your time to review the manuscript.

Methodologically, authors have created an online questionnaire developed via the platform SurveyMonkey and based on six variables with 22 items using five-point Likert-type scales.

The collected sample contains not only international visitors but also domestic travelers. Questionnaires were applied from early September 230 to mid-October 2023, and a total of valid 238 responses were collected.

These answers were analysed through the analysis tools SPSS 23 and Stata 18 were applied to conduct data analysis. More specifically, authors have used descriptive statistics to provide the demographic composition among the respondents. Second, Cronbach's Alpha (α) values for all constructs were tested to check their reliability. Third, CFA was utilized to examine the constructs’ credibility and validity. Lastly, SEM was examined to determine the efficiency of the proposed model and hypotheses as well as to identify the indirect effects within the mode.

Response: We highly appreciate the reviewer’s comments and feedback. The following detailed responses and associated changes have been made based on the reviewer’s comments.

Although there is a good discussion, there are no conclusions section. This should be corrected or at least rename the actual sections.

Response: Thank you for your kind suggestions. We provided theoretical and practical implications in discussion. As the reviewer pointed out, conclusions are provided on pages 12 and 13.

This study has shown that cultural, travel, and social motives lead to building overall destination image and also that the overall image also affects SNS intention into a positive and significant effect.

Authors have consulted an impressive number of references balancing older ones with very recent ones. This is important not only for readers to better understand the theoretical discussion but also to have a full understanding of the different perspectives.

Abstract doesn’t say anything about the sample size or methodology. I suggest to correct this situation.

Response: Thank you for your kind words. Regarding the issue you pointed out, we have supplemented the methodology adopted in the research in the Abstract.

Abstract: With the growing sense of sustainability and environmental protection, World Heritage Sites (WHS)  become a trendy destination among tourists. To promote heritage destinations in South Korea via social network sites (SNS) platforms, the joint support from tourists to share their experiences should be emphasized. This research aims to assess the formation process of WHS tourists’ SNS intentions by adopting concepts of travel motivation and overall image. A survey was conducted among 238 tourists who are living in South Korea and have visited WHS in South Korea. The results revealed that cultural, travel, and social motives lead to building overall destination image. The overall image also affects SNS intention into a positive and significant effect. The mediating effect of the overall image on the relationships between motives and SNS intention was examined as well. The study’s findings further provide theoretical and practical contributions that can help analyze tourists' motivations and increase the number of international visitors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. The paper is quite well written, although there are a few shortcomings, as outlined below, which should be taken into account in the revised version of this manuscript.

Comment 1: While the authors have correctly identified the research gap and justified it, the 'Introduction' section lacks an indication of the novelty of this paper and the contribution to the literature. It can be conjectured what the novelty of this manuscript is. However, this should be clearly indicated in this paper in the 'Introduction' section and justified, and the reader should know this perfectly well after reading this section.

Comment 2: I don't quite understand why the analysis is about South Korea. I have not found a justification for this. Such a justification could be that respondents from that country perfectly represent an area, or that there is a lack of research in this area for that country, etc. The important thing is that the authors should justify this choice either in section 1 or 3.

Comment 3: I also did not find an explanation of whether it matters that 25% of the respondents have a nationality other than Korean. This is relevant because they could be both people living in Korea and people temporarily in Korea. Does it matter from a findings point of view? I did not find an explanation of whether or not this is relevant to the findings and verifying the hypothesis.

Comment 4: The literature indicates that tourists' SNS intention varies greatly by age. Moreover, half of the tourists in international tourism will soon be young tourists. Why do the authors not consider this in their discussion? I understand that the purpose of the paper may be different and the authors' research intentions, but it should be clearly indicated in the purpose of the paper or chapter 3 that the authors do not consider the fact that tourists' intentions differ by age.

Comment 5: I do not understand the structure of section 5. The theoretical and practical implications, as well as the research limitations, are conclusions and not a discussion. So the authors should separate out the 'Conclusions' section.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. The paper is quite well written, although there are a few shortcomings, as outlined below, which should be taken into account in the revised version of this manuscript.

Response: We highly appreciate the reviewer’s comments and feedback. The detailed responses and corresponding changes made based on the reviewer's comments are as follows.

Comment 1: While the authors have correctly identified the research gap and justified it, the 'Introduction' section lacks an indication of the novelty of this paper and the contribution to the literature. It can be conjectured what the novelty of this manuscript is. However, this should be clearly indicated in this paper in the 'Introduction' section and justified, and the reader should know this perfectly well after reading this section.

Response: Thank you for pointing out the inadequacy in novelty and contribution of this paper. In Introduction, we explained the contribution of WHS to cultural branding. Meanwhile, we added more explanations about the importance of SNS platforms to promote South Korea’s heritage destinations. Additionally, we supplemented the important role of SNS sharing and the need to increase tourists’ common support and encourage them to share their experiences on pages 1 -2.

Comment 2: I don't quite understand why the analysis is about South Korea. I have not found a justification for this. Such a justification could be that respondents from that country perfectly represent an area, or that there is a lack of research in this area for that country, etc. The important thing is that the authors should justify this choice either in section 1 or 3.

Response: Thank you for your questions and suggestions. First, Korea has 16 destinations recognized as WHS until 2023, which has a nationwide distribution. Second, we considered promoting WHS as another imperative way to spread the cultural influence of South Korea to all over the world. As for SNS intention, we can learn the motivation process of how tourists would be willing to engage in the WHS promotion. While South Korea support various of SNS platforms and emphasized big data analytics within tourism destinations, SNS intention was inadequately studied in previous research of WHSs in South Korea. Thus, we chose South Korea as our target. The statements of the explanation above were supplemented or already exist in Section1.

The following reference has been added:

UNESCO. (n.d.). World Heritage Sites - The List. https://www.unesco.org/en/world-heritage/grid (accessed on 03 October 2023)

Comment 3: I also did not find an explanation of whether it matters that 25% of the respondents have a nationality other than Korean. This is relevant because they could be both people living in Korea and people temporarily in Korea. Does it matter from a findings point of view? I did not find an explanation of whether or not this is relevant to the findings and verifying the hypothesis.

Response: Thank you for bringing our attention to here. Actually, we checked both nationality and residence of all respondents. As you assumed, they contain people who were in or outside Korea at that time. However, the target sample of international respondents are from foreign communities in South Korea. This means all the international respondents are those who living in Korea rather than few-day travelers. We mentioned this point in the second paragraph in Data Collection.

In addition, we compared the two nationality groups before just in case, which showed no difference in the final results. Also, we did not consider cross-cultural comparison as our research objective, so we did not mention it in our results but only in the limitations.

Comment 4: The literature indicates that tourists' SNS intention varies greatly by age. Moreover, half of the tourists in international tourism will soon be young tourists. Why do the authors not consider this in their discussion? I understand that the purpose of the paper may be different and the authors' research intentions, but it should be clearly indicated in the purpose of the paper or chapter 3 that the authors do not consider the fact that tourists' intentions differ by age.

Response: Thank you for your questions and suggestions. Many countries in East Asia is approaching aging society, especially in Korea who has the fastest growth in aging population (The Lancet Regional Health-Western Pacific, 2023). Also, in the current study, age group above 40 accounted for 29.4%, reflecting the imperative component of senior market in Korea’s WHS. When selecting the sample, we witnessed considerable posts from aging tourists who visited WHS with their grandchildren for educational purpose. In this sense, we think we should not overlook the aging groups in Korea’s case.

Nevertheless, we agree with your point that SNS intention was examined to vary by age. As this study has unbalanced data among different age groups, we added up this point in “Limitations and suggestions for future research” as a limitation of our research that could be studied and strengthened in future research.

Reference for the explanation above:

The Lancet Regional Health-Western Pacific. (2023). South Korea’s population shift: Challenges and opportunities. The Lancet Regional Health-Western Pacific, 36.

Comment 5: I do not understand the structure of section 5. The theoretical and practical implications, as well as the research limitations, are conclusions and not a discussion. So the authors should separate out the 'Conclusions' section.

Response: Thank you so much for pointing out this issue. We provided theoretical and practical implications in discussion. As the reviewer pointed out, conclusions are provided pages 12 and 13.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

First I would like to compliment the authors on the interesting paper. After reading the text I have some issues with it. The quantitative part is ok and well justified but...

All the text has to be revised from an English point of view as there are many grammatical errors, plural and singular mistakes and poor phrasing detected.

The abstract has to include the application of the survey as no information detail is given about the methodology on this matter.

Abstract line 11: have not has

SNS has to be explained at least once

Literature review

From lines 141 to 147 all the paragraph has to be rewritten as it shows some English and logical rational problems

Line 173 has to have citation accordingly also known as… Who affirms that?

Line 190 and 191 which rare studies are those? Mentioned them…

Methodology

Line 212 can´t be written like that mentioning the studies have the previous ones

235 and 241 revised verb tense

233-242

This section has to be rewritten as many doubts come to mind. If the questionnaire was pretested explain how on lines 222/223

So with the problem of the invalid responses, I don´t understand what type of sampling was used. Please clarify in detail all the sampling processes from the first group of tourists to the vloggers and influencers used to “start the sampling method”.

Also foreigner's representation should be differentiated to boost theoretical implications

Practical implications

I have doubts that from lines 366 to 371 these conclusions can come from this questionnaire as nothing like this was mentioned before. Looks like a conclusion from the literature review. Further where is e-storytelling in this regard?

Lines 389 to 391 don´t add up?

In the end, when authors explain theoretical and practical contributions they go the "extra mile" to conclude things which can be extra questionnaire. This has to be met. 

English revision is mandatory as many mistakes were found

Author Response

Reviewer 3

First I would like to compliment the authors on the interesting paper. After reading the text I have some issues with it. The quantitative part is ok and well justified but...

All the text has to be revised from an English point of view as there are many grammatical errors, plural and singular mistakes and poor phrasing detected.

Response: Thank you for your valuable comments. We conducted a proofreading to improve the English for better reading. The detailed revisions can be checked from the texts highlighted in blue color. We truly appreciate your detailed comments that are very helpful for our improvement.

The abstract has to include the application of the survey as no information detail is given about the methodology on this matter.

Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue. We added the methodology part into the abstract.

Abstract line 11: have not has

Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue, we deleted the “has”.

SNS has to be explained at least once

Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue, we added the explanation about SNS in Introduction.

Literature review

From lines 141 to 147 all the paragraph has to be rewritten as it shows some English and logical rational problems

Response: We rewrote lines 141-147 and carefully checked about the grammar and logical mistakes. We hope the current version looks good to you.

The following reference were added for this revision:

Agapito, D., Oom do Valle, P., & da Costa Mendes, J. (2013). The cognitive-affective-conative model of destination image: A confirmatory analysis. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 30(5), 471-481.

Blain, C., Levy, S. E., & Ritchie, J. B. (2005). Destination branding: Insights and practices from destination management organizations. Journal of Travel Research, 43(4), 328-338.

Hunt, J. D. (1975). Image as a factor in tourism development. Journal of Travel Research, 13(3), 1-7.

Kotler, P., Haider, D., & Rein, I. (1993). There's no place like our place! The marketing of cities, regions, and nations. The Futurist, 27(6), 14.

Wang, B., Yang, Z., Han, F., & Shi, H. (2016). Car tourism in Xinjiang: The mediation effect of perceived value and tourist satisfaction on the relationship between destination image and loyalty. Sustainability, 9(1), 22.

Line 173 has to have citation accordingly also known as… Who affirms that?

Response: As the reviewer pointed out, the specific citation was added.

The following reference was added for this revision:

Hausmann, A., & Schuhbauer, S. (2021). The role of information and communication technologies in cultural tourists’ journeys: the case of a World Heritage Site. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 16(6), 669-683.

Line 190 and 191 which rare studies are those? Mentioned them…

Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue, two examples from the existing references were supplemented.   

Methodology

Line 212 can´t be written like that mentioning the studies have the previous ones

Response: As the reviewer pointed out, the detailed studies were specified.

235 and 241 revised verb tense

Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue, we revised the verb from past perfect tense to present perfect tense.

233-242

This section has to be rewritten as many doubts come to mind. If the questionnaire was pretested explain how on lines 222/223

Response: Thank you for bringing our attention to here. We highly agree that this section would make huge confusion to readers. Thus, we simplified the description of data screening for easier understanding.

Also, the process of pretest was specified for better understanding.

So with the problem of the invalid responses, I don´t understand what type of sampling was used. Please clarify in detail all the sampling processes from the first group of tourists to the vloggers and influencers used to “start the sampling method”.

Response: Thank you for your concern. We improved the sampling part and hope the current version is much more understandable.

Also foreigner's representation should be differentiated to boost theoretical implications Practical implications

Response: Thank you for your suggestion. However, we compared the two nationality groups before just in case, which showed no difference in the final results. Also, we did not consider cross-cultural comparison as our research objective, so we did not mention it in our results but only in the limitations.

I have doubts that from lines 366 to 371 these conclusions can come from this questionnaire as nothing like this was mentioned before. Looks like a conclusion from the literature review. Further where is e-storytelling in this regard?

Response: Thank you for your comments. We replaced this part with more general statements. We hope the current content has strengthened a lot.

Lines 389 to 391 don´t add up?

Response: Thank you for your valuable comments and feedback, we deleted this statement for more clear illustration.

In the end, when authors explain theoretical and practical contributions they go the "extra mile" to conclude things which can be extra questionnaire. This has to be met. 

Response: Thank you for your comments and suggestions, we deleted some parts in contributions and will be more cautious in future research.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript again, its revised version.

In my opinion all comments presented by me were taken into account by the authors. The only suggestion I can recommend is to moved the research limitations from the section 5.3 to the section 6.

I recommend this manuscript for publishing.

Author Response

Thank you for your feedback on our manuscipt. We appreciate your suggestion. We relocate the limitations from Section 5.3. to Section 6 after conclusions. 

We truly appreciate your time and support for improving this manuscript. 

Reviewer 3 Report

This version has been much improved as additional and needed references were made to classic authors and their previous studies concerning destination image formation.

Also, more improvements were made concerning the English. Looks much better now with greater logic and clarity when reading the paper

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review our revised manuscript. we truly appreciate your insightful feedback and comments for improving the manuscript. Moreover, thank you for your positive feedback regarding the improvements in English language quality.

All your  detailed comments are encouraging, and we carefully consider your suggestions throughout the revision process.  The manuscript can be improved as a result.