Study on the Effect of On-line Word of Mouth on Tourists´ Decision-Making

The existing literatures on Word-of-mouth (WOM) focus almost on the motivation, behavior, affecting factor of WOM spread. Researches about WOM on Tourists´ decision-making in the on-line environments are extremely exiguous. This article constructs the research framework model from the interpersonal factor (receiver´s trust propensity, tie-strength of the sender and the receiver) and impersonal factor (initiative in searching for WOM, fun, receiver´s expertise, perceived risk, tone of WOM), collects 354 samples through the tourist virtual communities and commentary site. Then we use statistic methods to further testify proposed conceptual model. Also the paper reveals managerial implications to the tourist enterprises based on the final conclusions.