Measuring Visitors’ Perceived Value with Ecotourism Smartphone Application

Tanalachimi, Ganapathy (2023) Measuring Visitors’ Perceived Value with Ecotourism Smartphone Application. PhD thesis, Faculty of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development.

	PDF TanalachimiGanapathy_dsva.pdf Restricted to Repository staff only Download (372kB) | Request a copy
	PDF (Please get the password by email to repository@unimas.my , or call ext: 3942 / 3973 / 3933) Thesis PhD_TanalachimiGanapathy.ftext.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (5MB) | Request a copy
	PDF Thesis PhD_Jason Lim Wei - 24 pages.pdf Download (313kB)

Abstract

Smartphone applications can significantly affect the visitor’s experience with the ever-rising numbers of consumers and greater incursion into people's lives. This research identifies the factors influencing the visitor’s experience of smartphone application usage for travelling purposes. There was a lack of focus on tourism applications that provide useful services for travelers and allow users to obtain information depending on their knowledge quickly. Improving the usability metrics for the developed ecotourism application was also critical. Therefore, this research examined the perceived value of visitors associated with Smartphone applications and their impact on visitor’s behavior. Furthermore, it also explores the impact of perceived value on visitors' experience in their pre, post, and during travel. An online sample size of 300 ecotourists from various countries was given a multi-questionnaire with a Likert-Scale between 1 and 5 used to collect the data. The collected data were used to determine the visitors' perceived value associated with smartphones and its impact on their experience using smartphone applications during travel. To ensure the reliability and validity of the result from the data set, the sample size only includes visitors who have been using a Smartphone application for their travel. Descriptive statistics reveal that the perceived value associated with smartphone applications includes social value followed by the epistemic value. In terms of associations, it was discovered that visitors' perceived value associated with smartphone applications was highly associated with visitors’ behaviour, purchase attitude, meaningful experience, mobile application quality, and meaningful interaction. A significant and decisive association between perceived social value with tourist behaviour has been discovered. This study found that only perceived social value and epistemic value substantially influenced visitors’ experience. This was due to the overall perceived value correlated with smartphone applications and significantly impacts visitors' travel involvement. Future studies should be based on various measurements and with a greater sample size to ensure higher validity and reliability of the findings.

Actions (For repository members only: login required)

View Item