Description
Abstract
Numerous studies have identified that self-construal (social identity and self-esteem) determining youth behavior towards the online tourism and destination searches. This research focuses on the impact of social media specifically on young consumer (Gen Alpha (2010-2024) behavior through self-construal (independent and interdependent self-construal) towards their online tourism searches. The objective of the paper is to elucidate the antecedents of the youth behavior while searching for tourist websites in the context of social media communication, the study was done on 550 college going students. The results highlights that there is a significant sway of self-concept and merriment in suing social media for travel information search. In addition to this the different variables of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) on user’s attitude and intention of use were examined. For the study a conceptual model is framed. The result drawn from the study is the importance of social media destination searches among the youth and their behavioral changes related to different factors, where it has been found that social identity, ease of use, perceived usefulness plays an important role for youth during their social media usage, whereas self-esteem was not an important aspect in social media searches for youths.
Keywords: Social-media, Alpha Generation tourist, Technology Acceptance Model, self- construal, consumer behavior.
