Investigating Mobile Social Media Users? Behaviors in Tourism Collaborative Information Seeking

Leisure travelers most often travel in groups with family, relatives or friends. It is argued that tourist information search tends to be more collaborative than a completely individual decision-making exercise. Collaborative information seeking (CIS) deals with collaboration in searching for information. In recent years, social media has been steadily increasing as an important information source for tourists who access social media frequently through their mobile devices. Research has shown that travelers rely more on the suggestions and reviews provided by experienced tourists for their travel planning and decision-making. Tourists undertake social search during which they exploit their social networks/relationships to improve the search process. However, limited research has investigated social media users' behaviors in collaborative search for tourism information. What is the role of social media in supporting of collaborative tourism information search, including collaborative search patterns and strategies in social environments, has remained unknown. This research aims to investigate mobile social media users' behaviors in collaborative search for tourism information. Using the Grounded Theory approach, a conceptual framework of mobile social media users' tourism CIS behavior will be built. Semi-structured in-depth interviews will be employed to collect users' search experiences.