Influencing of E-Word-of-Mouth Mediation in Relationships Between Social Influence, Price Value and Habit and Intention to Visit in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

In light of the implementation of the strategies of Vision 2030 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the remarkable development in the tourism sector in particular, this paper examined the influence of using social media to access travel-related information on the intention to visit from a domestic tourism perspective in Saudi Arabia. The paper used a correlation research design and quantitative and deductive research methods to examine the proposed hypotheses of this study. A structured questionnaire was used to gather the respondent’s views on tourist visit intention. A sample of 394 local tourist respondents was selected to administer the survey questionnaire. The paper used the convenience sampling method to collect the responses from the respondents. The empirical findings of data showed a significant direct relationship of social influence, price value, and habit with e-word-of-mouth, as well as confirm the significant direct relationship of e-WOM with intention to visit. The findings confirmed the mediating role of e-WOM in influencing the relationship of social influence and habit with tourist visit intention, while it was found that there was no mediating effect in the relationship of price value with tourist visit intention. This paper provides several practical contributions to practitioners in electronic tourism field.