Affiliations: [a] School of Management, China Women’s University, Beijing, China
| [b] School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China
| [c] Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing, China
| [d] Department of Business Studies, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Pakistan
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding auhtor: Umair Akram, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing, China. Tel.: +86
13120333936; E-mail: akram.umair88@pku.edu.cn.
Abstract: As a singularly important tourism group, women have unique perceptions and preferences, regarding the travel-information platforms that influence their tourism decisions. Based on the societal-development capital, technology acceptance and societal psychology constructs, this article proposes and empirically assesses an innovative research framework, in the tipping-points context. The empirical study discloses important effects by the pivotal virtual community, informational and environmental factors in China. The results show that collegial group centrality has a positive effect on participative behavior, while the latter, along with perceived usefulness and imitation of others, have positive effects on usage behavior. Besides, gender plays a moderating role in the relation between collegial group centrality and imitation of others-usage behavior. Despite the study’s limitations, these empirical results enable future researches to conduct comprehensive, dynamic studies of women tourists in the virtual tourism communities. And accurate perceptions of personalized needs of specific groups of tourists can substantially benefit travel application or ‘app’ operators.
Keywords: Female tourist, tourism app, tipping point, behavior of crowds
