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&

!!

! 22!

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