Understanding tourist decision-making in muslim-friendly tourism: A conceptual framework of user-generated content, expectations, and religiosity

Abstract

This study builds an integrated conceptual model to explain the process by which UGC affected tourists in deciding to travel to Muslim-friendly destinations through psychological and behavioral mechanisms. The era of digital tourism and social media has emerged, as tourists often turn to other users for visits they rely primarily on reviews, experiences, recommendations, photos and travel stories in your decision making about how to travel. Base on Social Cognitive Theory, this study proposes that UGC is a vital environment provocation to form tourists cognitive appraisals, readiness and conducts towards Muslim-friendly destinations. Since tourists expect about the destination quality, safety/halaal facilities and their overall travel experience based on information received from social media (UGC), therefore; it is proposed that tourist expectation mediates the relationship of UGC and visit decisions. Second, this study builds religiosity as a moderating variable for the effect of tourist expectations on visit decisions. Tourists with higher Islamic religious values are more likely to evaluate travel-related information and travel decisions based on the compatibility of destinations with Islamic principles. A conceptual research design was adopted in this study and six research propositions were developed that illustrate the direct, indirect, mediator, and moderator relationships between UGC, tourist expectations, religiosity, and the visit decision. The proposed model enriches the current understanding of Muslim-friendly tourism literature by integrating psychological perspective and behavioral aspect in a single holistic framework. While previous research has largely explored these relationships individually, this study uniquely investigates the intermediary role of Muslim tourists expectations, and the regulatory role of religiosity in explaining UGC tourist decision to travel to Muslim-friendly destinations. The findings will be able to offer theoretical insights that can be grounded for future studies related to tourism, and practical implications for destination managers by providing them the mechanisms to form appropriate digital marketing strategies utilising social media content and also taking in consideration of religious value approaches concerning enhancing tourists intention and decisions on visiting Muslim-friendly destinations.