AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

Explaining participation behaviour in communities of regional leisure-blogs

by Andreas Baumgartner




Institution: Vienna University of Economics and Business
Department:
Year: 2009
Keywords: RVK QQ 960, ST 205; Austria / tourism / internet / online community / web log / marketing
Record ID: 1031759
Full text PDF: http://epub.wu.ac.at/1918/1/document.pdf


Abstract

Self-drive day trip tourism has an enormous economic importance for the region of Lower Austria which surrounds Austria´s capital Vienna. The residents of Lower Austria and Vienna form the vast majority of day-trip visitors to Lower Austria. Despite the importance of the segment of day trip tourism for regional tourism marketing organizations (TMOs) this group of tourists is difficult to grasp. Promoting blogs of residents about their leisure time activities in a region is a promising marketing instrument for regional TMOs to address this market segment. This doctoral thesis project proposes and validates a behavioral model based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) for modeling behavioral intentions of three main participatory patterns in online communities based on blogs. Based on the results of this project possible starting points for subsequent research are identified and recommendations for TMOs intending to implement such regional blog communities are provided. The findings of this research project support practitioners by providing a deeper understanding of the motives of prospective participants. As the elements of the proposed behavioral model are based on previous research and conceptualized independent of the topic of interest of the blog community, the findings are additionally indicatory for research on blog communities in other fields. (author's abstract)