Bridging Technology and Tourism Behaviour: A Theory of Planned Behaviour Study of Social Media's Influence on Perceived Behavioural Control Through Technology Access, Ease of Use, And Familiarity

Social media has become one of the important ways people can discover new travel destination to visit. However, not everyone finds these platforms equally comfortable using it, and this difference can shape how confident a person feels about planning a trip through them. This study examines three important factors that may impact person’s travelling plan through social media that is Access to social media, perceived ease of Use and familiarity with social media and asks whether these three factors help people feel more confident and capable when planning trip online. To investigate this, 150 social media users in India who use social media for travelling planning were surveyed. The response showed that people feel more confident and in control while planning travel online when they have good access to social media and when they find it easy to use. This confidence plays an important role in increasing their willingness to visit destination they find on social media. The study also found that simply having familiarity with social media has a smaller impact compared to having reliable access and finding the platform easy to use.in addition, three factors such as access, ease of use, and familiarity are closely tied to one another, suggesting that together they may represent a person’s overall readiness to use technology for their travelling plan. This points to a broader idea worth exploring further: that access, ease of use and familiarity may all be part of one overall sense of feeling technologically prepared to plan travel online. For tourism marketers, the findings highlight that helping people feel comfortable and confident using social media can be just as prominent as sharing attractive travel content. The tourism marketers can increase their chances of turning online interest into actual travel visits just by making social media platforms easy to access and use.