Investigating the Role of Weibo in Generating Chinese Tourist Motivations: The Application of Self-Determination Theory

With the role model of Facebook and Twitter, social media has been tailored to satisfy the social needs of users in different countries. Weibo as an online social community gets the limelight in China and has been used as a marketing technique in tourism industry. The primary purpose of this paper is to assess Chinese users’ travel motivations generated by Weibo using self-determination theory and to investigate the impact of travel motivations on users’ satisfaction with Weibo. The results indicated that among the three components (social influence, social comparison, and self-determination) of selfdetermination theory, social influence and social comparison have significant impacts on Chinese users’ satisfaction with Weibo. This study provides a new theoretical foundation for future research on social media and suggests marketing strategies targeting Chinese
tourists.