Travel experience sharing on social media: effects of the importance attached to content sharing and what factors inhibit and facilitate it

Purpose This study aims to examine the factors influencing tourists to share their travel experiences on social media (SM). Design/methodology/approach An online questionnaire was administered to 1,280 American travelers, and the data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings The PLS-SEM results indicated that non-participant sharing had a direct and positive effect on tourists’ tendencies to share their travel experiences on SM. Environmental, relational and security concerns had direct and negative effects on actual travel-experience sharing, whereas altruism, personal fulfillment and self-actualization had direct and positive effects on actual travel-experience sharing. Practical implications Travelers were found to attach importance to content shared on SM when they believed the content to be objective and reliable and were more likely to share such content on their own SM accounts. This finding suggests that tourist-created content is crucial. Tourism businesses, therefore, should reduce or eliminate inhibitory factors to increase content sharing. This research provides guidance for tourism businesses’ SM initiatives. Originality/value The study, first, contributes to an understanding of the factors affecting the sharing of travel experiences on SM. Second, this study develops a holistic approach that integrates the factors that might affect tourists’ SM content-sharing behavior into a single model.