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Lack of Theoretical Foundations in UGC Tourism Studies? An Investigation of the Extent of this Issue
Émilie Bourdages
Ph.D. Student at UQAM School of Management, Montréal, Canada
ABSTRACT Constantly evolving, the field of technology creates many challenges for managers, but these challenges can be turned into opportunities for those who are able to adapt and keep pace. A perfect illustration of this lies in the explosion of user-generated content (UGC). After realizing the potential of UGC, researchers were eager to propose managerial implications. As noted by Lu and Stepchenkova (2015), there is a lack of theoretical foundations in this research field. Did researchers have prioritized managerial implications at the expense of theoretical foundations? Bearing that in mind, this article focuses on two research goals: (1) to assess the extent of the “atheoretical issue” in UGC tourism studies and (2) to discover what kinds of theories are used in UGC studies. Keywords: User-generated content, eWOM, atheoretical issue, theoretical foundations, tourism, theories
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INTRODUCTION
Constantly evolving, the field of technology creates many challenges for managers, but these challenges
can be turned into opportunities for those who are able to adapt and keep pace. If Internet had originally
the task of providing information to consumers, they now play an active role through social media and
online evaluation sites that allow them to share their experiences and discover the experiences of other
consumers (Bilgihan, Peng and Kandampully, 2014; Xiang, Magnini and Fesenmaier, 2015). Indeed, the
content published on social media and online evaluation sites are part of this larger construct called user-
generated content (UGC). More precisely, UGC can be defined as: “media content created or produced by
the general public rather than by paid professionals and primarily distributed on the Internet” (Daugherty,
Eastin, and Bright, 2008: 2). With the explosion of UGC, many authors think that the power is now in the
hands of consumers (Berthon et al., 2012), since they now have many channels to express themselves.
However, managers who listen carefully to UGC and know how to manage this large amount of data have
clearly a competitive advantage over their rivals. Indeed, marketers and researchers both have realized the
big potential of UGC, which is a goldmine for them. This may be an explanation for the boom in research
on UGC.
In the last decade, UGC has become a really trendy subject for researchers across many fields, especially
in tourism. However, is that gold rush to develop managerial implications has been too fast? According to
Lu and Stepchenkova (2015), it could have been the case. In their systematic review of UGC tourism
studies, these authors point out a lack of theoretical foundations in the articles reviewed.
“Studies often do not explicitly report the theoretical perspectives through which the analyses were conducted. This lack of theoretical foundations may stem from the immediacy of research applications and the view that clear-cut managerial implications may substitute for a sound theoretical framework”. (Lu and Stepchenkova, 2015:142-143)
Based on this observation, this study aims to discover if Lu and Stepchenkova (2015) were right about the
lack of theoretical foundations in UGC tourism studies and to what extent. More precisely, our main
research goals are (1) to assess the extent of the “atheoretical issue” in UGC tourism studies and (2) to
discover what kinds of theories are used in UGC studies.
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Obviously, theories are essential to conduct a research and skipping this part will certainly decrease the
value of its implications. There are three main reasons why theory is so crucial in research: “(1) it provides
a framework for analysis; (2) it provides an efficient method for field development; and (3) it provides
clear explanations for the pragmatic world” (Wacker, 1998: 362). As Lewin said, “nothing is as practical
as a good theory” (Lewin, 1945: 129).
Our investigation will include all articles reviewed by Lu and Stepchenkova (2015), but also an update,
since their data collection ended in April 2013. Furthermore, we will take a look at other domains, mainly
marketing and management, to see if this “atheoretical issue” is widespread and which kinds of theories
(e.g. anthropological, sociological, psychological) are used in UGC studies. More precisely, we decided to
compare our systematic review of UGC tourism studies to a systematic review of eWOM studies (King et
al., 2014). After analyzing both corpuses, we will be able to develop a short guide of relevant theories for
undertaking UGC/eWOM researches.
The remaining of this article is divided as follow. First, the methods section explains how we have
collected and analyzed data. More details are given on the 410 academic papers we have reviewed. Then,
the Result and Discussion section exposes our findings. This section is subdivided in two, according to our
research goals. Finally, the conclusion presents some promising research avenues that have emerged from
this study.
METHODS
Data Collection
In order to investigate the extent of the problem raised by Lu and Stepchenkova (2015), the lack of
theoretical foundations in UGC tourism studies, we had first to analyze the 122 articles they have
reviewed. These papers were selected following clear criteria:
‘‘Only English-language academic articles from journals that adhere to a double-blind review process and peer-reviewed conference articles were selected. Only empirical research that had a well- defined UGC sample in the form of textual, pictorial, video, or numerical entries (e.g., rating scores) was considered; thus theoretical/conceptual articles on the nature of UGC or review studies
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were not included. Articles that used travel-related UGC to demonstrate an idea or answer a question from a field of study other than tourism and hospitality […] were not included. Articles published in both conference proceedings and academic journals were included only once, unless the authors, research purpose, or research design had been changed; the older or preliminary version of the same article was excluded.’’ (Lu and Stepchenkova, 2015: 123).
Lu and Stepchenkova (2015) have reviewed articles that were published between 2001 and April 2013,
when they ended their data collection. Following the same requirements, the researcher has found 102
additionnal UGC tourism studies from May 2013 to 2016. Since 5 articles from Lu and Stepchenkova’s
review (2015) were not available to the researcher (Sanford and Chuang, 2009; Banyai, 2010; Chaves,
Gomes and Pedron, 2012; Murakami, Kawamura and Suzuki, 2012b; Otto, Crotts, Davis, and Mason,
2012), the final corpus of UGC tourism studies was made of 219 articles.
Our data collection has been realized with the use of scientific databases, including ScienceDirect,
EBSCO Business Source Complete, Emerald Insight, ABI/NFORM Complete (ProQuest) and SAGE
Journals Online. These specialized databases were prefered to Google Scholar who has been critized for
inflated hit counts and lack of advance serach criteria (Jasco, 2008). Despite these criticisms, Google
Scholar is a relevant search tool, especially when used in combination with academic databases (Jasco,
2008). Bearing that in mind, Google Scholar was use after the specialized databases to reduce the risk of
missing important articles. To update the systematic review made by Lu and Stepchenkova (2015), we
restricted our research to articles published after 2013 and used essentially the same search terms: “ “user-
generated content,” “user-generated media,” “consumer-generated media,” “social media,” “social
network sites,” “blogs,” “online reviews,” “e-complaints,” and “electronic word-of-mouth” in various
combinations with words such as “tourism,” “travel,” “hospitality,” “hotel,” and “restaurant.” ” (Lu and
Stepchenkova, 2015: 122). All results from scientific databases were screened to ascertain their revelance,
but we only analyzed the suitability of the first 50 results generated by Google Scholar (Lu and
Stepchenkova, 2015).
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In addition to UGC tourism studies, we also searched in other domains to verify if the “atheoretical issue”
is widespread and to see which kinds of theories are used in UGC studies. Using the same databases, we
modified some of our search terms in order to not be restricted to tourism studies. Futhermore, we
removed the year filter to include papers prior to 2013. During our research, we realized that the terms
used in the first data collection didn’t lead us to many articles, with the exception of “social media” and
“eWOM”. With the term “social media”, most articles focus was not on user-generated content on social
media, but on marketing strategies including social media. Therefore, we decided to exclude this term
from our second data collection. On the other hand, the term “eWOM” gave us exactly what we needed: a
considerable amount of articles, which focus on user-generated content. According to Smith, Fischer and
Yongjian (2012), the concepts of UGC and eWOM are really similar and overlap. Therefore, we decided
to compare our systematic review of UGC tourism studies to a systematic review of eWOM studies.
Since there is already a systematic review of eWOM studies that was pulished in 2014 (King et al.), which
do not include a theoretical analysis, we decided to use it as a starting point. The articles reviewd by King
and colleagues (2014) comes from many fields, including marketing, MIS, communications, management,
and psychology. They were selected by the following criteria:
“1) the study is published in a peer-reviewed journal; 2) the study's focus is on various forms of eWOM or at least on a subset of variables; 3) the study has a defined sample and an empirical methodology; and 4) the study addresses eWOM at the individual consumer (micro) or market (macro) level” (King et al., 2014: 168).
Their data collection ended in early 2013 with a corpus of 190 articles (King et al., 2014). However, when
we looked at their list of references, we only found 123 articles that could have been reviewed, the other
references not being related to eWOM. Therefore, we used these 123 articles and made an update of this
corpus to include academics papers from 2013 to 2016, for a total of 191 articles.
In summary, we have scrutinized a corpus of 410 academic papers to find out how many of them have
theoretical foundations and which kinds of theories are used (e.g. anthropological, social, psychological,
etc.). The following section explains how we analysed these data.
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Data Analysis
The main goals of our analysis are (1) to assess the extent of the “atheoretical issue” in UGC tourism
studies and (2) to discover what theories are used in UGC studies.
First of all, we need to focus on the definition of the term theory. As Stephen Hawking said: “In order to
talk about the nature of the universe and to discuss questions of whether it has a beginning or an end, you
have to be clear about what a scientific theory is” (Hawking, 1998: 10). Although often used by
academics, this term is rarely defined. Indeed, many authors take its meaning for granted, thinking that it
is clear and unequivocal. Obviously, this is not the case (Bacharach, 1989; Wacker, 1998). This is a
mistake we can’t afford since our goal is to identify how many articles are based on theories and how
many are not. For Bacharach (1989), “a theory is a statement of relations among concepts within a set of
boundary assumptions and constraints. It is no more than a linguistic device used to organize a complex
empirical world” (p.496). This author underlines the importance of distinguishing description from theory:
“the primary goal of a theory is to answer the questions of how, when, and why, unlike the goal of
description, which is to answer the question what” (p.498). On his side, Wacker (1998) synthesized the
views of Bunge (1967), Reynolds (1971) and Hunt (1991) on the definition of a theory: “generally,
academics point to a theory as being made up of four components, (1) definitions of terms or variables, (2)
a domain where the theory applies, (3) a set of relationships of variables, and (4) specific predictions
(factual claims)” (p.363). To complete the definition of theory, we must also understand what theory is
not: description, categorization of data, typologies, metaphors, scales and definitions (Bacharach, 1989).
In light of these definitions, we read each of the 410 academic papers looking for the presence of a theory.
Note that we read only the revelant sections to find the theoretical foundations of an article (abstract,
keywords, introduction, literature review, theoretical foundations, conceptual background, hypotheses
developpement and conclusion) and ignore the sections methods, results and discussion. The articles that
are not based on a theory were classified as “atheoretical paper” and no further analysis was made on
them. For the others, we identified the theory or theories on which they were relying. We also assessed the
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domain (e.g. anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc.) of each theory to know if some domains are more
popular and/or relevant in UGC studies. Furthermore, we classified all articles, both atheoretical and
theoretical, regarding their year of publication and in which journal they were published to see if those
variables have an impact on the presence or absence of a theory. The results of our analyses are presented
and discussed in the next section.
RESULTS & DISCUSSION To achieve our research goals, we have scrutinized a corpus of 219 of UGC tourism studies and another
one of 191 eWOM studies. After having analyzed them separately, we also compared the results. This
section presents the results of this investigation. In the first part, we present and discuss our findings
related to our first objective, which is to assess the extent of the “atheoretical issue” in UGC tourism
studies. The second part will provide answers to our second objective, which is to discover what kinds of
theories are used in UGC studies.
1. Assessing the extent of the “atheoretical issue” in UGC tourism studies
1.1. UGC tourism studies
First of all, we analyzed the 117 articles reviewed by Lu and Stepchenkova (2015) (all empirical papers)
and we found 95 atheoretical papers (81,20%) and only 22 theoretical papers (18,80%). Their observation
about the lack of theoretical foundations is obviously accurate. Although they are slightly less worse, the
results of the update are still alarming. On the additional 102 articles, there are 69 atheoretical papers
(67,65%) and 33 theoretical papers (32,35%). Overall, 74,89% of UGC tourism studies do not have
theoretical foundations (see Appendix A for the detailed results) and therefore have potentially less
valuables outcomes (e.g. managerial implications). The results clearly demonstrate that the “atheoretical
issue” is a major one and that researchers should give more attention on this problem and the reasons
behind it. Lu and Stepchenkova (2015) give a potential explanation of this issue, stating that it “may stem
from the immediacy of research applications and the view that clear-cut managerial implications may
substitute for a sound theoretical framework” (Lu and Stepchenkova, 2015:142-143). If it is the case, there
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are probably others subjects, regardless of the field, that became trendy too fast and in which the eagerness
of developing managerial implications has generated collateral damage (e.g. lack of theoretical
foundations).
1.2. eWOM studies
In order to assess if the “atheoretical issue” found in UGC tourism studies is spread across many fields, we
undertook the same analysis on a systematic review of eWOM studies, which includes studies coming
from marketing, MIS, communications, management, and psychology. In this corpus of 191 articles, there
are 101 atheoretical papers (52,88%) and 90 theoretical papers (47,12%). In other words, an article on two
does not rely on a theory, which means that the “atheoretical issue” is widespread.
First of all, we have to underline that there is approximately 25% more atheoretical papers in UGC
tourism studies than in eWOM studies. One potential explanation is the fact that tourism as a research
field is relatively nascent. It would be interesting to carry out further comparisons between the percentages
of atheoretical papers coming from the tourism field versus other fields.
However, the result of 52,88% of atheoretical papers in eWOM studies demonstrates that the problem is
not restricted to the tourism field. On one side, this could indicate that the hypothesis of Lu and
Stepchenkova (2015) on the eagerness to develop managerial implications is right. If it is the case, we
would recommend researchers to be more careful with the "hot topics" and resist the temptations of
rushing their researches. On the other hand, these alarming results are maybe revealing a larger problem in
academic research that has nothing to do with the trendiness of a subject. What would be the results if we
conduct the same analysis on other topics? Is 50% of atheoretical papers a normal rate in many topics or in
many fields? Further investigations are needed to answer those questions.
1.3. Bibliometrics
In the previous sections, we have illustrated that the “atheoretical issue” in UGC tourism studies is a major
one and that it is spread across many fields. With the use of bibliometrics, we now investigate if this
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problem is spread over many years and in different journals. In doing so, we aim to verify if these two
variables could have generated a negative bias on the percentage of atheoretical papers.
1.3.1. Year Comparison
One potential explanation of the extent of the “atheoretical issue” could be the fact that our corpus
includes older articles. Did the older articles have skewed the results? If so, the percentage of atheoretical
papers must decrease year over year. Bearing this in mind, we generated linear graphics with our results
(See Appendix C). Table 1 and Table 2 below illustrate the dispersion of articles over time. As you can
see, the year of publication doesn’t have any effets on the results. In both graphics, the curves of
atheoretical papers (red) and theoretical papers (green) are really similar, invalidating the possibility that
older articles could have generated a negative bias.
[Insert Table 1 here] [Insert Table 2 here]
1.3.2. Journals Comparison
We first analyze the UGC tourism studies. Excluding the conferences papers, the articles were published
in 55 different journals (see Appendix D). This high number of journals comes from the fact that 33
journals have published only one article on this topic. The top ten journals have published at least 7
articles, up to 23 for Tourism Management (Table 3). Note that Annals of Tourism Research is the only
journal that has more theoretical papers than atheoretical ones. Looking at the results, we can see that the
“atheoretical issue” is spread across differents journal.
[Insert Table 3 here]
Regarding the eWOM studies, they were published in 64 differents journals, including 31 journals that
have published only one article on that topic (See Appendix E). The top ten journals have published at
least 4 articles, up to 16 for Computers in Humans Behavior (Table 4). Computers in Human Behavior,
Journal of Business Research, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications and International Journal
of electronic Commerce stand apart by having clearly more theoretical papers than atheoretical ones.
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Excluding these journals, the ratio of one article out of two being atheoretical is widespread across the
different journals.
[Insert Table 4 here]
In sum, previous analyzes have allowed to assess the extent of the “atheoretical issue” in UGC tourism
studies. This major issue is widespread across many fields, over years and in different journals. Although
the situation is especially critical in the tourism field, where there is 74,89% of athereotical papers, the
result of 52,88% atheoretical papers in eWOM studies is also alarming. The next section will focus only
on the theory-based paper, in order to discover what kinds of theories are used in UGC studies. In doing
so, we will provide a short guide of relevant theories for UGC/eWOM studies. This could be very useful
for future researches on that topic.
2. Discovering which theories are used in UGC studies
Even if there is only 25,11% of theoretical papers in UGC tourism studies and 47,12% in eWOM studies,
there is a wide array of theories. More than forty different theories are used as theoretical foundations in
the corpus we have analyzed. Most of them come from psychology, communication and sociology fields.
Excluding some exceptions, the same theories are used by UGC tourism studies and eWOM studies. In
this section, we merge all theory-based paper into one pool (“UGC studies”) in order to list the most
popular theories. Theories cited by at least four different articles were retained, generating a top 14 of the
theories used by UGC studies (Table 5). This section presents an overview of these theories, in order to
create a short guide of relevant theories in UGC studies.
[Insert Table 5 here]
1. Source credibility theory According to Hovland, Janis and Kelley (1953), “the effectiveness of a communication is commonly
assumed to depend to a considerable extent upon who delivers it” (Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1953: 19).
The variance in the communicator’s credibility will directly impact the outcomes of the message, that is to
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say his acceptance or his rejection (Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1953). Furthermore, opinion changes
occur often when the message is delivered by a high credibility source (Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1953).
These authors and other researchers have extended this theory, but the definition of source credibility has
remained the same. This extract illustrate the original definition:
“It seems necessary, therefore, to make a distinction between 1) the extend to which a communicator is perceived to be a source of valid assertions (his “expertness”) and 2) the degree of confidence in the communicator’s intent to communicate the assertions he considers most valid (his “trustworthiness”). In any given case, the weight given a communicators’s assertions by his audience will depend upon both of these factors, and this resultant value can be referred as the “credibility” of the communicator” (Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1953: 21).
Among the articles reviewed, eleven have used the source credibility theory as theoretical foundations
(Bickart and Schindler, 2001; Cheung, Luo, Sia and Chen, 2009; Li and Zhan, 2011; Zhang and Mao,
2012; Ayeh, Au and Law, 2013b: Hautz et al., 2014; Kim, Sung and Kang, 2014; Ayeh, 2015; Crespo,
Gutiérrez and Mogollon, 2015; Herrero, San Martin and Hernandez, 2015; Filieri, 2016).
2. Attribution theory Based on Heider’s work (1944, 1958) and later developed by other researchers, including Kelley (1967,
1973), which is sometimes more cited than Heider himself, attribution theory is “a theory about how
people make causal explanations, about how they answer questions beginning with "why?" It deals with
the information they use in making causal inferences, and with what they do with this information to
answer causal questions” (Kelley, 1973: 107). More simply, we can say that this theory is “designed to
explain how people perceive, infer, or ascribe causes to their own and other people's behaviour” (Colman,
2014). Note that the attributions that people makes are not always accurate (Heider, 1944). Heider (1944)
advanced that people act like “naive psychologists” and jump to conclusions even with incomplete
evidence or no evidence at all.
In the corpus we have analyzed, there are 10 articles relying on the attribution theory (Senecal and Nantel,
2004; Lim et al., 2006; Sen and Lerman, 2007; Lee and Youn, 2009; Jiang, Gretzel, & Law, 2010; Kim
and Gupta, 2012; Qiu, Pang and Lim, 2012; Blazevic et al., 2013; Chang and Wu, 2014; Crespo, Gutiérrez
and Mogollon, 2015)
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3. Elaboration likelihood model (ELM) The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) was elaborated by Petty and Cacioppo (1981; 1986) and
“provides a fairly comprehensive framework for organizing, categorizing, and understanding the basic
processes underlying the effectiveness of persuasive communications” (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986: 3).
According to these authors, there are two distinct routes to persuasion: central route and peripheral route
(Petty and Cacioppo, 1986).
“The first type of persuasion was that which likely occurred as a result of a person’s careful and thoughtful consideration of the true merits of the information presented in support of an advocacy (central route). The other type of persuasion, however, was that which more likely occurred as a result of some simple cue in the persuasion context (e.g. an attractive source) that induced change without necessitating scrutiny of the central merits of the issue-relevant information presented (peripheral route)” (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986: 3).
There are seven postulates of the ELM (Table 6). In order to fully understand those postulates, we need to
refer to the definitions of attitudes, influences and persuasion given by the authors.
“ […] we regard attitudes as general evaluations people hold in regard to themselves, other people, objects, and issues. We will use influences as a very general term that refers to any change in these evaluations. We will use persuasion more specifically to refer to any change in attitudes that results from exposure to a communication” (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986: 4).
[Insert Table 6 here]
ELM has been used by ten articles in our corpus (Lin, Geng and Whinston, 2005; Lee, Park and Han,
2008; Park and Kim, 2008; Gupta and Harris, 2010; Li and Zhan, 2011; Filieri and McLeay, 2014; Luo,
Wu, Shi and Xu, 2014; Chung, Han and Koo, 2015; Tsao, Hsieh, Shih and Lin, 2015; Yan, Wu, Wang,
Wu, Chen and Wei, 2016).
4. Social identity theory We owe the social identity theory to the social psychologist Henri Tajfel (1978). Unlike Festinger’s social
comparison theory (1954), which focuses on interindividual comparisons, Tajfel underlines the fact that
individuals belong to different social groups and that these memberships to these groups contributes to
their self-image (Tajfel, 1978). Tajfel (1978) has purposely restricted his definition of social identity,
using an intergroup perspective. His definition goes as follow:
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“For the purpose of this discussion, social identity will be understood as that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel, 1978: 63).
Among the articles reviewed, nine have used social identity theory to anchor their research (Bagozzi and
Dholakia, 2002; Dholakia, Bagozzi and Pearo, 2004; Dholakia, Bagozzi and Pearo, 2004; Forman, Gose,
Wiesenfeld, 2008; Sohn, 2009; Yeh and Choi, 2011; Cheung and Lee, 2012; Lee, Noh and Kim, 2013;
Liu, Jiang, Lin, Ding, Duan and Xu, 2015).
5. Theory of reasoned action (TRA) Based on Fishbein and Ajzen’s work (1975), the theory of reasoned action (TRA) is concerned with the
relations between beliefs, attitudes, intentions and behaviors. These authors define the term attitude as
“the amount of affect for or against some object” (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975: 11). It is important to note
that “most people hold both positive and negative beliefs about an object, and attitude is viewed as
corresponding to the total affect associated with their beliefs” (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975: 14). They are
two types of beliefs: beliefs about the consequences of a behavior and normative beliefs about this
behavior. The first ones lead to attitude toward this behavior and the second to a subjective norm
concerning this behavior. These two concepts (attitude and subjective norm) are the determinants of
behavioural intentions, which lead directly to behavior (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). This conceptual
framework is illustrated in Figure 1 (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975: 16).
The TRA has been used by eight articles in our corpus (Huang, Hsiao and Chen, 2012; Purnawirawan,
Dens and De Pelsmacker, 2012; Lee and Shin, 2014; Casalo, Flavian, Guinaliu and Ekinci, 2015a;
Gunawan and Huarng, 2015; Erkan and Evans, 2016; Yan, Wu, Wang, Wu, Chen and Wei, 2016; Bilgihan
et al., 2016)
[Insert Figure 1 here]
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6. Theory of planned behavior (TPB) The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is an extended version of TRA (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975)
developed by one of its authors, namely Ajzen (1985). The main difference between TRA and TPB lies in
the inclusion of perceived and actual control, over internal and external factors, of the planned behavior
(Ajzen, 1985). Ajzen and Madden (1986) were the first to test this new theory. Their conceptual
framework is illustrated in Figure 2 (Ajzen and Madden, 1986: 418). They proved that perceived
behavioral control has a direct effect on behavior and an indirect effect through intention (Ajzen and
Madden, 1986).
[Insert Figure 2 here]
In the corpus we have analyzed, there are eight articles relying on TPB (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2002; Lim
et al., 2006; Picazo-Vela et al., 2010; Huang, Hsiao and Chen, 2012; Casalo, Flavian, Guinaliu and
Ekinci, 2015a; Fu, Ju and Hsu, 2015; Bilgihan et al., 2016; Elwalda, Lü and Ali, 2016). 7. Technology acceptance model (TAM) Based on Davis’ work (1986), the technology acceptance model (TAM) was developed mainly to
“improve our understanding of user acceptance processes, providing new theoretical insights into the
successful design and implementation of information systems” (Davis, 1986: 7). According to the TAM,
perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use are the two determinants of attitude toward using a given
system, which directly affects the actual system use (Davis, 1986: 24). This conceptual framework is
illustrated in Figure 3 (Davis, 1986: 24).
[Insert Figure 3 here]
Among the articles reviewed, eight articles have based their research on TAM (Awad and Ragowsky,
2008; Ayeh, Au and Law, 2013a; Yang, 2013; See-To and Ho, 2014; Ayeh, 2015; Park and Nicolau,
2015; Elwalda, Lü and Ali, 2016; Yan, Wu, Wang, Wu, Chen and Wei, 2016).
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8. Uses and gratifications theory Anchored in the field of communication, the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) is exploring “the way in
which individuals use communications, among other resources in their environment, to satisfy their needs
and to achieve their goals” (Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch, 1974). With this theory, the emphasis is on the
people and not on the medium used to communicate (Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch, 1974). Referring to the
Swedish researchers Lundberg and Hultén (1968), Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch point out five assumption
of the UGT:
“1. The audience is conceived of as active, that is, an important part of mass media use is assumed to be goal directed (McQuail, Blumler and Brown, 1972). […] 2. In the mass communication process much initiative in linking need gratification and media choice lies with the audience member. […] 3. The media compete with other sources of need satisfaction […] 4. Methodologically speaking, many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by individual audience members themselves- that is, people are sufficiently self-aware to be able to report their interests and motives in particular cases […]
5. Value judgements about the cultural significance of mass media communication should be suspended while audience orientations are explored on their own terms. […]” (Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch, 1974: 21-21).
In the corpus we have analyzed, there are six articles using UGT as theoretical foundations (Nambisan and
Baron, 2007; Park and Lee, 2009; Wang, Teo and Wei. 2009; Hsu, Wang, Chih and Lin, 2015; Kasabov,
2016; Mkono and Tribe, 2016).
9. Prospect theory Kahneman and Tversky (1979) have developed the prospect theory as an alternative model to the expected
utility model, in order to better explain individual decision making under risk (Kahneman and Tversky,
1979). This behavioral economic theory is composed of two phases, namely editing and evaluating
(Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). First, a preliminary analysis of the prospects is made, in order to simplify
them (editing), following by an evaluation of those simplified prospects (evaluation). The prospect with
the highest value is selected (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). In prospect theory, “value is assigned to
gains and losses rather than final assets and […] probabilities are replaced by decision weights”
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(Kahneman and Tversky, 1979: 263). Simply put, realistic trade-offs are assessed instead of aiming for an
optimal scenario.
Among the articles reviewed, five articles based their research on prospect theory (Hu and Li, 2011;
Khare, Labrecque and Asare, 2011; Chung and Koo, 2015; Park and Nicolau, 2015; Fang et al., 2016)
10. Theory of hermeneutic circle of representation Anchored both in philosophy and sociology, the hermeneutic circle of representation was first evoked in
tourism studies by Albers and James (1988) and later developed by Urry (1990). This theory is concerned
with a particular type of UGC, namely photographs. Tourists tend to take exactly the same pictures that
they have seen in brochures and advertising, reproducing again and again the same representation of a
particular paysage or attraction (Albers and James, 1988; Urry, 1990). This practice freezes in time
cultures and populations, preventing them to evolve in the collective imagination. Therefore, tourists are
often deceived by the lack of “authenticity” when they travel, unless populations play the game and act as
expected by tourists (Albers and James, 1988).
The theory of hermeneutic circle of representation has been used by five articles, all from the UGC
tourism studies corpus (Azariah, 2012; Ong and du Cros, 2012; Stylianou-Lambert, 2012; Stepchenkova
and Zhan, 2013; Shakeela and Weaver, 2016).
11. Social capital theory We owe the social capital theory to the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1986), who defined social
capital as follow:
“Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition- or in other words, to membership in a group- which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a “credential” which entitles them to credit, in the various sense of the word” (Bourdieu, 1986: 248-249).
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According to this researcher, the value of someone social capital can be evaluated by summing the
different forms of capital (economic, cultural and social) of each of the members of his social network
(Bourdieu, 1986).
Even if this theory was developed in a physical setting, some researchers use it in an online setting.
Among the articles reviewed, there are five articles based on this theory (Hung and Li, 2007; Huang, Lin
and Lin, 2009; San José-Cabezudo and Camarero-Izquierdo, 2012; Kim, Lee and Bonn, 2016; Wang, Yeh,
Chen and Tsydypov, 2016).
12. Social comparison theory Based on Festinger’s work (1954), the social comparison theory is made of nine hypotheses primarily
concerned with the ways in which individuals compared themselves with others. Here are four
assumptions of the social comparison theory:
“Hypothesis I: There exist, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and his abilities” (Festinger, 1954: 117). “Hypothesis II: To the extent that objective, non-social means are not available, people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparison respectively with opinions and abilities of others” (Festinger, 1954: 118). “Hypothesis III: The tendency to compare oneself with some other specific person decreases as the difference between his opinion or ability and one’s own increases” (Festinger, 1954: 120). “Hypothesis VII: Any factors which increase the importance of some particular group as a comparison group for some particular opinion or ability will increase the pressure toward uniformity concerning that ability or opinion within that group” (Festinger, 1954: 130).
Four articles have used the social comparison theory as theoretical foundations (Chen, Harper, Konstan
and Li, 2010; Mudambi and Schuff, 2010; Crespo, Gutiérrez and Mogollon, 2015; Tussyadiah, Kausar and
Soesilo, 2015).
13. Motivation theory Referring to many motivation theorists (e.g. Calder and Staw, 1975; Deci, 1971, 1972; Pinder, 1976),
Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw (1992) have adapted the motivation theory to the information systems field.
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More precisely, their theory is concerned with the adoption and use of new technology (Davis, Bagozzi
and Warshaw, 1992). There are two types of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic, and each of them has a
different influence over Internet users’ behaviors (Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw, 1992). On one hand,
extrinsic motivation refers to the realization of a goal-oriented activity, where the outcomes are more
important than the activity per se. On the other hand, intrinsic motivation means that the activity is done
for the mere pleasure of doing it (Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw, 1992). “Within this dichotomy, perceived
usefulness is an example of extrinsic motivation, whereas enjoyment is an example of intrinsic
motivation” (Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw, 1992: 1112).
In the corpus we have analyzed, there are four articles relying on motivation theory (Ayeh, Au and Law,
2013a; Yoo, Sanders and Moon, 2013; Liu and Park, 2015; Park and Nicolau, 2015).
14. Game theory Considered as the father of game theory, John Von Neumann first published an article about game theory
in 1928, than presented the complete theory in Theory of Games and Economis Behavior in 1944 (Von
Neumann and Morgestern, 1944). According to the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, game theory is:
“the science of strategy. It attempts to determine mathematically and logically the actions that “players” should take to secure the best outcomes for themselves in a wide array of “games.” The games it studies range from chess to child rearing and from tennis to takeovers. But the games all share the common feature of interdependence. That is, the outcome for each participant depends on the choices (strategies) of all. In so-called zero-sum games the interests of the players conflict totally, so that one person’s gain always is another’s loss. More typical are games with the potential for either mutual gain (positive sum) or mutual harm (negative sum), as well as some conflict” (Dixit and Nalebuff, 2008).
In fact, game theory is composed by a variety of mathematic models (Von Nuemann and Morgestern,
1944). In the corpus we have reviewed, four articles have used a game-theoric model in their research (Ba
and Pavlou, 2002; Dellarocas, 2003; Lin, Geng and Whinston, 2005; Sun, 2012).
In sum, the previous section answers the second research goal, which is to discover what kinds of theories
are used in UGC studies. Mainly anchored in psychology, communication and sociology fields, a wide
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array of theories are used by UGC studies. We presented an overview of the top 14 theories, which are all
cited by at least four different articles, in order to create a short guide of relevant theories for UGC studies.
CONCLUSION The aim of this article was two-fold. First, we assess the extent of the “atheoretical issue” in UGC tourism
studies, as noted by Lu and Stpechenkova (2015). Not only we have demonstrated that it is a major issue,
but we also established that this problem is widespread across many fields, over years and in different
journals. We didn't want to simply expose the “atheoretical issue”, but also propose solutions to reduce its
magnitude. Bearing that in mind, our second objective was to discover what kinds of theories are used in
UGC studies. We presented an overview of fourteen theories coming from different fields, in order to
create a short guide of relevant theories in UGC/eWOM studies. We hope this will help future researchers
working on that topic.
This research has allowed the emergence of many promising research avenues. First of all, we cannot
ignore that there is approximately 25% more atheoretical papers in UGC tourism studies than in other
fields. We made the assumption that the relatively nascent nature of tourism as a research field could
explain the results obtained. Since our analyzes are restricted to only one topic, it would be interesting to
carry out further comparisons between the percentages of atheoretical papers coming from the tourism
field versus other fields. In doing so, we will know if the lack of theoretical foundations is a generalized
problem in tourism studies.
Another interesting research track lies in the exploration of the extent of the atheoretical issue in research.
In the corpus of eWOM studies we have analyzed, 52,88% of articles were atheoretical. Is it normal to
have an article on two that does not rely on a theory in peer-reviewed journals? We believe the answer is
no. Does all fields have this problem? Do researchers really think that good managerial implications can
compensate for a lack of theoretical foundations (Lu and Stepchenkova, 2015)? Further researches are
needed to deepen the subject and provide some answers to our questions.
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TABLES
!!Table&3&:&Top&10&journals&where&UGC&tourism&studies&were&published&
Table&4&:&Top&10&journals&where&eWOM&studies&were&published&
!!!!!!!!!!
Journals Atheoretical papers
Theoretical papers
Total
1. Tourism Management 13 10 23 2. Journal of Travel Research 8 9 17 3. Journal of Vacation Marketing 9 4 13 4. Annals of Tourism Research 4 7 11 5. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 10 0 10 6. International Journal of Hospitality Management 7 2 9 7. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management 6 1 7 8. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing 5 2 7 9. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research 6 1 7 10. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 7 0 7
Journals Atheoretical papers
Theoretical papers
Total
1. Computers in Human Behavior 5 11 16 2. Journal of Business Research 2 8 10 3. Decision Support Systems 4 5 9 4. Journal of Interactive Marketing 4 5 9 5. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 2 7 9 6. International Journal of Hospitality Management 5 2 7 7. Marketing Science 6 0 6 8. Tourism management 4 2 6 9. International Journal of Electronic Commerce 0 4 4 10. Australasian Marketing Journal 3 1 4 10. Management Science 2 2 4 10. Journal of Management Information Systems 2 2 4 10. Journal of Interactive Advertising 3 1 4 10. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 4 0 4
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!Table&5&:&Top&14&theories&used&in&UGC&studies&
Theories (numbers of articles) Author Field 1. Source credibility theory (11) Hovland, Janis, and Kelley, 1953 Psychology 2. Attribution theory (10) Heider, 1944, 1958; Kelley, 1967 Social Pychology 3. Elaboration likelihood model (ELM) (10) Petty and Cacioppo, 1986 Communication 4. Social identity theory (9) Tajfel, 1978 Sociology 5. Theory of reasoned actions (TRA) (8) Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975 Psychology 6. Theory of planned behavior (TPB) (8) Ajzen, 1985; Ajzen and Madden, 1986 Psychology 7. Technology acceptance model (TAM) (8) Davis, 1986 Information systems 8. Uses and gratifications theory (6) Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch, 1974 Communication 9. Prospect theory (5) Kahneman and Tversky, 1979 Behavioral economic 10. Theory of hermeneutic circle of representation (5)
Albers and James, 1988; Urry, 1990 Philosophy, Sociology
11. Social capital theory (5) Bourdieu, 1986 Sociology 12. Social comparison theory (4) Festinger, 1954 Social psychology 13. Motivation theory (4) Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw, 1992 Social psychology,
Information systems 14. Game theory (4) Von Neumann and Morgestern, 1944 Economic, psychology !!Table&6.&Postulates&of&the&Elaboration&Likelihood&Model&of&Persuasion&
1. People are motivated to hold correct attitudes. 2. Although people want to hold correct attitudes, the amount and nature of issue-relevant elaboration in which they are willing
or able to engage to evaluate a message vary with individual and situation factors. 3. Variables can affect the amount and direction of attitude change by (a) serving as persuasive arguments, (b) serving as
peripheral cues, and/or (c) affecting the extent or direction of issue and argumentation elaboration. 4. Variables affecting motivation and/or ability to process a message in a relatively objective manner can do so by either
enhancing or reducing argument scrutiny. 5. Variables affecting message processing in a relatively biased manner can produce either a positive (favorable) or negative
(unfavorable) motivational and1or ability bias to the issue-relevant thoughts attempted. 6. As motivation and/or ability to process arguments is decreased, peripheral cues become relatively more important
determinants of persuasion. Conversely, as argument scrutiny is increased, peripheral cues become relatively less important desterminants of persuasion.
7. Attitude changes that result mostly from processing issue-relevant arguments (central route) will show greater temporal persistence, greater prediction of behavior, and greater resistance to counterinterpersuasion than attitude changes that result mostly from peripheral cues.
Source: Petty and Cacioppo, 1986
!!!!!
! 21!
FIGURES !Figure&1&Conceptual&framework&of&TRA&
!Figure&2&Conceptual&framework&of&TPB&
!!Figure&3&Conceptual&framework&of&TAM&
!!
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