Description
The hospitality and tourism industry has seen a gradual trend of applying interactive voice-based, artificial-intelligence-embedded devices, commonly known as voice assistant (VA). VA technologies have become pivotal in aiding tourists throughout different phases of their travel journey, providing services such as suggesting hotel booking options and offering travel advice. An increasing number of tourism marketing practitioners aim to leverage VA technology to attract tourists, promote their offerings, and set pre-travel expectations for customers (Loureiro et al., 2021).
However, existing studies on VA technology in tourism have predominantly focused on topics such as data privacy, security, human-like characteristics, function development, and the impact on consumer experience (Yang et al., 2022). Little attention has been given to understanding the efficacy of VA recommendations and promotions in enticing tourists or customers to adopt the promoted tourism products or services.
In the context of an increasingly environmentally conscious tourism and hospitality sector that supports sustainability (Pulido-Fernández et al., 2019), showcasing environmental sustainability practices should be an effective strategy to attract tourists. Draws upon the self-affirmation theory, which posits that individuals are inclined to discover self-worth and self-enhancement within society through active engagement with and adoption of environmental sustainability practices (Sherman & Cohen, 2006), this study proposes that VAs may effectively communicate and champion the environmental sustainability impacts of tourism products or services. Such communication by VAs also has the potential to amplify tourists’ intention to purchase the tourism services or products recommended by the VA.
On the other hand, studies in technology management underscore the strong connection between user engagement (UE) and the adoption of products or services advertised through technology (Zhu et al., 2023). UE involves generating interaction and participation, emphasizing the psychological connection and interactive involvement individuals have with an object (So et al., 2014). In the case of VAs, UE is expected to play a mediating role between VA recommendation messages and tourists’ acceptance, influenced by factors like psychological self-worth and societal contribution, particularly in response to environmental sustainability messages conveyed by the VA (Rozumowski et al., 2020)
Moreover, in the context of VA communicating environmental sustainability message, this study suggests that an individual’s cultural orientations and consumption purposes may jointly influence tourists’ UE levels with VAs. Cultural orientations are divided into Independent (IND) orientation, where individuals prioritize personal consumption goals, emphasizing uniqueness and internal abilities in purchase decisions, and Interdependent (INT) orientation, where individuals view themselves as integral to society, valuing group affiliation. The purposes for which a traveler uses a VA may also affect the acceptance of suggestions and VA engagement. Transactional VA use is goal-oriented, focusing on alignment with needs to achieve specific value, whereas non-transactional VA use assesses alignment with user expectations. When the VA provides information that considers tourists cultural orientations and consumption purposes, tourists UE with the VA is expected to increase.
A scenario-based experiment was employed; this study recruited 329 participants from Taiwan and 320 participants from the United Kingdom to represent INT and IND cultural orientations, respectively (suggested by Hofstede’s (2024) cultural dimensions database). The results reveal that incorporating environmental sustainability practices into VA recommendations can effectively increase consumers’ intention to adopt VA suggestions for tourism products and services, and this impact is mediated by the enhancement of UE with the VA. Furthermore, when environmental sustainability feature relevant content is provided by the VA, for IND-oriented/INT-oriented tourists who use VA for a transactional/non-transactional purpose, their UE with the VA will be higher compared to those who use VA for a non-transactional/transactional purpose.
This study contributes to the tourism and technology management literature by demonstrating that (1) tourists will be more engaged with VA when it communicates the environmental sustainability messages of a product or service and be more willing to adopt the VA environmental sustainability recommendations, and (2) the cultural orientations and VA-facilitated shopping purposes of tourists can jointly affect their engagement with VA. The results shed light for tourism practitioners regarding market segmentation strategies and technology management by suggesting that the communication of environmental sustainability aspects of a product or service to tourists can be significantly enhanced through the effective utilization of VA.
References
Fernández, J. I. P., Garcı́A, P., & Espinosa-Pulido, J. A. (2019). Does environmental sustainability contribute to tourism growth? An analysis at the country level. Journal of Cleaner Production, 213, 309–319.
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (2024). Country Comparison Tool. https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison-tool [Accessed 3rd February 2024]
Loureiro, S. M. C., Japutra, A., Molinillo, S., & Bilro, R. G. (2021). Stand by me: analyzing the tourist–intelligent voice assistant relationship quality. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 33(11), 3840–3859.
Rozumowski, A., Kotowski, W., & Klaas, M. (2020). Resistance to customer-driven business model innovations: An explorative customer experience study on voice assistant services of a Swiss tourism destination. Athens Journal of Tourism, 7(4), 191–208.
Sherman, D. K., & Cohen, G. L. (2006). The Psychology of Self‐defense: Self‐Affirmation Theory. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (pp. 183–242).
So, K. K. F., King, C., & Sparks, B. (2014). Customer engagement with tourism brands: Scale development and validation. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 38(3), 304–329.
Yang, Y., Liu, Y., Lv, X., Ai, J., & Yi-Fan, L. (2021). Anthropomorphism and customers’ willingness to use artificial intelligence service agents. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 31(1), 1–23.
Zhu, C. Io, M., Hall, C. M., Ngan, H. F. B. & Peralta, R. L. (2023). How to use augmented reality to promote a destination? The mediating role of augmented reality attachment. International Journal of Tourism Research, 26(1), e2603.
