The Impact of After-Travel Sharing on Social Media on Tourism Experience from the Perspective of Sharer: Analysis on Grounded Theory Based on Interview Data

Abstract

In the age of rapid development of social media, most researches focus on the tourists’ motive for sharing, content preference, and the impact of content shared on potential tourists, while few researches pay attention to the impact of tourism sharing on the sharer itself. With grounded theory, this paper analyzes the sharing preferences of tourists at different tourism experience levels and the impact of sharing on the sharer’s own tourism experience and next destination choice. The research shows the following: (1) sharing tourism experience on social media will positively regulate the sharer’s tourism experience, thus positively promoting the tourist’s satisfaction for this trip and expectation for next trip. (2) The sharing preferences and focuses of tourists at different tourism experience levels are different, which constitutes the hierarchy model of tourism sharing. (3) The destination choice preferences of tourists at all sharing levels are related to the sharing levels at which the tourists are. The paper also verifies the fact that Gaffman’s dramaturgical theory onstage and backstage are not completely independent but have significant effect on each other.

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1. Introduction

Tourism experience can be divided into the expected experience before travel, field experience during travel, and reminisced experience after travel [1]. At the after-travel stage, tourists always share their tourism experiences through memories, establish new understandings in sharing [2], and form new after-travel experiences. Therefore, after-travel experience is impacted by both factors of field experience and after-travel experience. There are a lot of forms of after-travel sharing, from written letter and word of mouth before to social media that more and more tourists choose for sharing with the progress of science and technology now. One of key functions of social media is sharing of experience and knowledge (pictures and videos). Social media provides an effective “tool” for tourists to “establish” after-travel experience [3].Compared with the original sharing form, social media shows its strengths of higher propagation speed and larger coverage. Tourism sharing on social media adds a new sharing experience element to tourism experience and grants a new connotation to tourism experience. The impact of social media on tourism experience can be understood best by considering the interaction between media and human. Through performance and interaction of tourism sharing, tourists can discover themselves, expand the social circle, and obtain a sense of accomplishment. Current researches mostly focus on experience before travel and during travel, but few researches pay attention to experience after travel, and most researches concern about tourists’ motive for sharing on social media, content preferences, the impact of sharing on potential tourists, etc. [4]. People know little about what aspects after-travel sharing on social media impact the sharer’s own tourism experience. By means of semistructured interview with interviewees, this paper studies the impact of after-travel sharing on social media on the sharer’s tourism experience from three aspects of sharing preference, sharing influence mechanism, and destination choice preference. Tourism experience can be divided into five levels according to tourists’ experience depth: sensory experience, cognitive experience, emotional experience, regression experience, and spiritual experience [5, 6]. The research on the impact of sharing on social media of tourists at five levels on tourism experience shows the following: (1) sharing tourism experience on social media will positively regulate the sharer’s tourism experience, thus positively promoting the tourist’s satisfaction for this trip and expectation for next trip. (2) The sharing preferences and focuses of tourists at different tourism experience levels are different, which constitutes the hierarchy model of tourism sharing. (3) The destination choice preferences of tourists at all sharing levels are related to the sharing levels at which the tourists are.

2. Related Literature Analysis

2.1. Tourism Experience

Travel is a short experience with social, leisure, and consumption properties aimed to seeking for pleasure [7]. Tourism experience is one of important parts of tourism. Hong et al. pointed out on a conceptual level: “Tourism experience is a physical and mental happy and relaxed feeling of the tourist who is in the world of travel and is deeply integrated with current situation” [2]. Tourism experience is a psychological phenomenon and a pleasant sensation (enjoyment) expressed through mood or emotions intensively. The process of tourism experience is not only the process of sightseeing in destination but also the perception for destination before experience and the memory after experience. Pine and Gilmore pointed out in The Experience Economy: “Actually, experience is the good feelings in mind when a person reaches a certain level of mood, physical power, intelligence and even spirit [8]. In tourism behavior research field, memory is considered capable of regulating behavior intention, so it is included into research of tourism experience [9]. Curlly believed that tourism experience was the product of social construction to a great extent and was always constructed in a hidden way. The experiences felt by tourists during tourism vary from person to person. Tourists have their own good feelings and memories, but as a result, no two people obtain absolutely same experience, because any experience is actually the result of interaction between everyone’s mental state and tourism events” [10]. A complete tourism experience is divided into experience before, during, and after travel. Before travel, tourists establish tourism experience through gaze. During travel, tourists feel the tourism experience through “integration” with destination. After travel, tourists establish their own tourism experience through recalling and expressing the first two stages. Tourists will undergo a new round of experience restoration process through memory, writing, sharing, and other processes and reconstruct the destination in their own way [10]. The narration based on memory can change tourists’ tourism experience and push tourism experience towards the tourists’ own preference. Tourists can deepen their self-reflection and understanding through telling the travel stories, showing travel pictures and videos and sharing the ideas on journey, maintain the human communication, enrich life experience, and obtain a sense of accomplishment. Tourism promotes memory, and memory rebuilds tourism.

2.2. Tourism Sharing on Social Media

As Internet technology becomes more mature, more and more social APPs occur consequently. Social media software is not only a product for instant communication; at the same time, it also becomes the first choice for people to share life thanks to its convenience and quickness [11]. Sharing life on social media is impacting the sharers’ form and content unconsciously. More and more tourists prefer to show what they see, hear, and think on journey via such a convenient “stage.” Sharing generates values for the users of social media platform and makes the platform atmosphere active [12]. The so-called tourism sharing on social media means tourists’ behavior of communicating their tourism experience in ways of text, picture, or short video via the social media platform. Knowledge sharing behavior in virtual community has attracted attention from foreign scholars very early [3]. The research content focuses on the factors affecting the sharers to share and factors affecting the viewers to receive the content; the research methods include experimental method, questionnaire method, and other methods; with respect to sharing carrier, the attentions are mostly concentrated on the impact of pictures taken, texts shared, and other content on sharers and viewers; now, there are few researches on the impact of sharing tourism experience on the sharer itself. Actually, tourism sharing on social media has a bidirectional impact. Except for the impact on viewers, the impact on sharers is worthy of more attention. The interaction shared after travel will give a motivation of next sharing. Although such an impact possibly has a lagging regulation for current tourism experience, it is an important driving force for tourism sharing behavior [13]. This paper will study the impact of after-travel sharing on social media on the sharer’s tourism experience. Studies have revealed that the existence of social media influencers (SMIs) has immense impact in the modulation of consumer behavior in the travel industry. Customer journey theory is used to explain the influence of SMI trust on the decision-making aspects of the travelers. It also emphasizes on the evaluation of the role of customers journey constructs which include their desire, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decisions, satisfaction levels, and their experience sharing. The results reveal that customer’s trust in SMIs has positive impact on traveler’s decision-making [6]. Studies have also used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze factors that impact tourists on sharing their travel experiences on social media [14, 15]. The results indicated that nonparticipant sharing had positive impact on tourist’s interest in sharing travel experiences on social media. Environmental, relational, and security factors had direct and negative impact on tourist experience sharing. Also altruism, personal fulfilment, and self-actualization had positive impact on travel experience sharing [16, 17].

3. Research Method, Data Collection, and Processing

3.1. Data Source

The data in this research comes from the semistructured interview between the author and the interviewees. The reason for choosing semistructured mode of interview over the other modes is due to its advantage of two-way communication. In this mode of interview, interviewers have the ability to learn answers to questions and understand the reason behind the answers. It also allows the respondents to discuss regarding sensitive issues and provides quantitative data for comparison with the previous set of data or in analyzing future trends. Semifree in-depth interview will not make interviewees feel stressed or deviate from the interview theme. The whole interview process is completed in Mandarin with no language barrier or misunderstanding. Besides, only the author and the interviewee are on the scene throughout the process with no interference from the third party. The interviewees are friends, classmates, or acquaintances of the interviewer (the author) with no sense of strangeness, so the interviewees are willing to share their most real ideas, which greatly reduces the phenomenon of being unwilling to say something due to unfamiliarity. All the selected interviewees and interviewers have experience of going out to travel within the last six months, so their feelings for tourism can be recalled and are real.

The “snowball” sampling method is used in this research. Snowball sampling technique is also referred as referral sampling or chain. It is a nonprobability technique wherein the existing subjects of study recruit future subjects from among their known acquaintances. Hence, the sample group grows like a snowball. In this method, the selected interviewees will be not so strange to each other and will talk freely to each other, which can ensure the credibility and validity of data. First, 25 interviewees who are the classmates, families, and friends with direct social and blood relationship with the interviewer (the author) are selected, the interviewees knowing each other are excluded, and the final 10 interviewees do not know each other. A lot of valid interview information is obtained through in-depth semistructural interview with them, and then, the 10 interviewees are required to recommend 2-3 families, friends, or classmates of them as the next “snowball” interviewees. In the process of “snowball” sampling, in consideration of possibly high similarity between the interviewees, so in order to avoid repeated interview, the interviewees with high similarity are excluded on premise of understanding the interviewees’ background and preliminary conditions, and finally, 23 interviewees are selected to participate in subsequent interviews. The interviewees are aged from 18 to 53, and they have different occupations, genders, and academic levels. The minimum interview time is 15 minutes, the maximum interview time is 50 minutes, and the average interview time is 32 minutes. From Aug 2021 to Nov 2021, 18 tourists who had travel experience within the last six months were interviewed. In Dec 2021, five tourists who did not know each other and were in different ages received additional interviews. All interview contents were transferred from sound records to texts with approval of interviewees. The population statistics information of a total of 23 interviewees are shown in Table 1.

Table 1

Conditions of interview samples.

No.	Age	Gender	Academic level	Occupation	Travel frequency (year)	Average number of tourism sharing per year
1	24	Female	Master	Student	1~2	1
2	30	Male	Bachelor	Employed	≥2	2
3	27	Female	Bachelor	Teacher	1~2	1
4	53	Male	Master	Teacher	1~2	1
5	25	Male	Junior college	Sales	≥2	2
6	19	Male	Bachelor	Student	1~2	1
7	31	Female	Bachelor	Employed	≥3	1
8	23	Female	Bachelor	Assistant	1~2	2
9	20	Female	Bachelor	Student	1~2	3
10	27	Male	Master	Manager	1~2	2
11	25	Female	Master	Student	1~2	2
12	32	Male	PhD	Student	1~2	1
13	27	Male	Bachelor	Employed	1~2	1
14	18	Male	Senior high school	Student	1~2	2
15	30	Female	Bachelor	Sales	1~2	2
16	50	Male	Senior high school	Student	≥2	1
17	18	Male	Senior high school	Student	≥2	1
18	26	Female	Bachelor	Employed	1~2	2
19	16	Male	Senior high school	Student	1~2	1
20	48	Female	Senior high school	Unemployed	1~2	1
21	24	Male	Master	Student	≥3	2
22	22	Female	Bachelor	Student	1~2	2
23	38	Male	Bachelor	Employed	1~2	1

3.2. Research Method

This research is done guided by grounded theory. Grounded theory is a famous qualitative research method proposed by Glaser and Strauss in 1967. The most core principle of grounded theory is abstracting out new concepts based on experience [18]. Before research, the researchers should abandon all inherent concepts and study with no ideas in mind. On the basis of collecting data systematically, they should constantly summarize and abstract out core categories and combine the core categories to a story line. Compared with quantitative method, the bottom-up grounded theory is deeper and more flexible. The grounded theory research with no inherent ideas can avoid the impact on results due to the researcher’s personal experience. The operation with grounded theory requires three steps. Grounded theory enables producing of a detailed thick description that reveals areas of conflict and contradiction. It provides an inductive methodology that enables systematic guidelines for collecting, synthesizing, analyzing, and conceptualizing of quantitative data for the construction of theory. First, all data collected should be organized preliminarily and logged in openly. Second, the initial categories logged in openly should be summarized, organized, and abstracted further for core login, which is also called level-3 coding. The core login is summarized and abstracted out the major categories. Finally, the major categories are combined in series, which is selective login and also called level-3 coding [19]. This paper mainly uses NVIVO12 software for coding and explores the impact of after-travel sharing on social media on the sharer’s tourism experience through level-1 coding, level-2 coding, and level-3 coding. This helps in categorization of data for achieving better inferences.

3.3. Data Processing

3.3.1. Level-1 Coding

This is a process of conceptualization for collected text data. With NVIVO12 software, this paper analyzes each sentence of text data, finally establishes 2,131 nodes among 23 interview texts, forms 98 preliminary concepts, and obtains 14 initial categories including time extension, space extension, memories deepening, positive emotions optimization, negative emotions reduction, social identity, local identity, local familiarity, spirit sharing, emotional sharing, scenery sharing, spiritual pleasure, spiritual enjoyment, and sensory pleasure. Table 2 shows the process of a part of coding.

Table 2

Coding example of sharing levels.

Major category	Initial category	Conceptualization	Text example
Sharing preference	Spirit sharing	Pursue belief, dream	“Tibet is a place calling my soul, I cannot help getting approaching to her”; “I can only find the initial dream here.” “No regrets in this lifetime”
	Emotional sharing	Touched, regret, and shocked	“Always some regrets.” “Every layer of ash on the wall witnesses a period of history.” Beauty in nature beyond description!
	Scenery sharing	Scenery description, documentary description	“Wonderful mountain, water and scenery.” “Fairyland on earth Jiuzhaigou Valley”

3.3.2. Level-2 Coding

After level-1 coding is completed, a total of 14 initial categories are obtained. According to different properties, the initial categories are classified and organized and abstracted out five major categories: (1) physical and mental experience including three initial categories of time extension, space extension, and memories deepening; (2) emotional experience including two initial categories of optimizing positive emotions and reducing negative emotions; (3) local attachment including local identity and local familiarity (Table 3); (4) sharing preference including spirit sharing, emotional sharing, and scenery sharing (Table 2); and (5) destination choice preference including spiritual pleasure, spiritual enjoyment, and sensory pleasure (Table 4).

Table 3

Coding example of impact of sharing on this tourism.

Major category	Initial category	Conceptualization	Text example
Physical and mental experience	Time extension	The tourism is complete upon completion of sharing; the process of sharing is also enjoyment in tourism; recall the tourism before sharing	No sharing into WeChat Moments does not mean a completion of tourism; before sharing into WeChat Moments, I will view all pictures, select carefully and share the pictures with special meanings.
	Space extension	I am still immersed in the pleasure of sharing after leaving the destination; shorten the distance to destination	I feel I’m still in the destination when sharing tourism stories at home; even I have left Weizhou Island, I feel I’m still there when sharing into WeChat Moments.
	Memories deepening	Go over the happiness; recall the travel	Before sharing, I will think of some interesting things of tourism.
Emotional experience	Positive emotions optimization	Become happier; have more desire to express; love the local place more	The more I think about the happy thins of tourism, the more funny and interesting it gets; actually that place is really romantic. I cannot find romantic words to describe it. I really like it.
	Negative emotions reduction	Sharing is not bad; the comments make me feel good	I feel disappointed and share into WeChat Moments to complain. But everyone admire my travel, so I’m not that unhappy any more.
	Social identity	Enhance self-esteem, self-identification, and more communication with friends	I’m not showing off, but I think these pictures represent my taste; everyone comments, so I think we have more communication.
Local attachment	Local identity	Physical dimension identity and mental dimension identity	Weizhou Island gives me special experiences, and I feel the happiness of small fishing village.
	Local familiarity	Familiarity, full understanding	I almost go to Nanwan street every night; I like Changhai, and I can even say the route clearly in memory.

Table 4

Coding example of destination choice preference.

Major category	Initial category	Conceptualization	Text example
Destination choice preference	Spiritual pleasure	Pursue oneself, belief	Of course, Christians go to the church; I go to the prairie to find the missing myself
	Spiritual enjoyment	A place stories happen	Go to red scenic spots to learn some red knowledge
	Sensory pleasure	Good scenery, stunt	Absolutely, go to a place with wonderful scenery; a hot place online

3.3.3. Level-3 Coding

After level-1 coding and level-2 coding, 5 major categories are obtained including “the time-space extension of sharing for tourism experience,” “the impact of tourism sharing on the sharer’s tourism experience emotion,” “the impact of tourism sharing on local attachment,” “sharing preference,” and “destination choice preference.” The five categories are the five aspects of sharer’s tourism experience affected by tourism sharing, and they do not function independently but impact each other dynamically. Therefore, “the impact of tourism sharing on social media on the sharer’s tourism experience” is selected as the core category to lead the five major categories.

4. Analysis Result and Discussion: Conceptual Model Building and Behavior Mechanism

4.1. Conceptual Model Building

According to the research with grounded theory in this paper and the enlightenment of related literature, the model of impact of after-travel sharing on social media on the sharer’s tourism experience is built from three aspects (Figure 1).

[figure(s) omitted; refer to PDF]

4.2. Description of Impact Process

4.2.1. Content Shared

The tourists at different levels have different experience focuses, and the difference in experience focuses on journey results in different after-travel sharing focuses. According to the differences in experience focuses at five levels, the content shared by tourists can be divided into three levels: scenery sharing, spirit sharing, and emotional sharing. The tourists at sensory experience level usually feel the intuitive scenery on journey, and the content shared by them are mostly praise of scenery such as “wonderful mountain, water and scenery” and “fairyland on earth Jiuzhaigou Valley.” The tourists at cognitive experience level and emotional experience level not only focus on scenery, but they are concerned more about the origin or relevant historical stories behind the scenery. The cognitive appraisal theory in tourism deals with an individual’s reaction to a certain event based on cognition-emotion-behavior sequence. The tourist’s initial reaction to an unexpected incident helps in engaging in cognitive evaluations. The cognitive factors have great impact on tourist’s evaluation for any unexpected incidents. The cognitive reaction results in emotional response. In case of unexpected or unwanted scenarios, hostile emotional reactions could be observed leading to formation of certain behavioral intentions. For example, after visiting the Palace Museum, the tourists not only praise the magnificent buildings but also admire the wisdom and greatness of the ancients, “every layer of ash on the wall witnesses a period of history,” and “every brick tells the time and witnesses the rise and fall here.” The contents shared transfer from matters to human to generate emotional interaction and empathy. The tourists at regression experience level and spiritual experience level are no longer confined to the psychological and sensory feelings but sublimate to spiritual and soul level to talk to themselves and talk to belief. For example, the Muslims go to the holy land Mecca that is the spiritual home of them. They find themselves there. They share not for the viewers’ understanding, but this is a way for them to release themselves and talk to themselves.

4.2.2. The Impact Mechanism of Sharing on This Tourism

The positive extensions of physical and mental experience caused by the sharer are reflected in three categories of time extension, space extension and memories deepening. “It will promote the sharer to share and pay special attention to local customs and national features and find something to share.” Before realization of sharing behavior, the sharer should recall and perform the experience in its own way on its self-built stage. In order to ensure the authenticity and completeness of content shared, the content should be investigated. In this process, the sharer will deepen its knowledge for that destination. The original tourism experience is extended on this stage and will be obtained again through memory and performance even if leaving the destination. “To share into WeChat Moments, you will surely think about the interesting things on journey and you will feel you go to the destination again while sharing.” In the process of sharing, the sharer always share according to fixed time sequence or other logical sequences, and the sharer’s mind is brought to tourism again, which is another space-time dislocation realization of tourism.

In addition, the viewers’ timely or delayed likes and comments or communication with the sharer will also result in time and space extension of the sharer’s tourism experience. “It’s been a long time, when we met each other, my friend mentioned what I shared into WeChat Moments again and said it was so interesting, and I also remembered what happened during tourism again.” Even if leaving the destination, due to the special time and space feature, the tourism experience will still impact this tourism experience through memory at the stage of recalling. The impact of sharing on social media on tourism experience does not function independently; actually, the time experience extension and space experience extension are indivisible; they promote each other and impact each other.

Sharing plays a positive promotion role on the sharer’s emotions. The information shared by the sharer includes three kinds of emotions: positive emotions, neutral emotions, and negative emotions, while there is less neutral emotions in after-travel sharing. This paper focuses on the impact of sharing positive emotions and negative emotions on this tourism experience. “I will choose the positive content to share into WeChat Moments for others to see interesting and beautiful things, and others will think that my tourism is very attractive.” Sharing of positive emotions will make the sharer more confident for this tourism. In the process of sharing, the sharer goes over the good and positive moments again and again, which will enhance the overall positive emotions of tourism. Some tourists share the less satisfactory things on journey. Sharing the less satisfactory tourism experience on social media is helpful to reduce the negative opinions for this tourism, which strengthens the after-travel evaluation in turn. “Too many people go to travel during National Day holiday. Natural scenery could be my purpose, but I only saw a sea of people, so I shared to complain.” Sharing on social media is like a way of complaint. After releasing the negative emotions, the sharer’s negative emotions will reduce, which is helpful to form overall positive emotions and generate positive evaluation for this tourism. At the same time, speaking out the past events will greatly impact a person’s emotions and behavior reaction [13]. Clearly expressing your own ideas will strengthen this feeling [20]. Researches show that when unpleasant events happen during tourism, people always tend to share their experience as a way of relieving emotions [21]. In this way, the tourists who have pleasant events on journey can strengthen their sense of joy.

Local identity is an individual’s evaluation for a place from symbolic dimension, emotion, or other aspects [22]. Both physical dimension and social symbols will positively promote the tourists’ local identity [23]. Tourists’ sharing preference has three levels. The physical dimension perceived by tourists at scenery sharing level will deepen the tourists’ local identity. While sharing the scenery, they constantly recall and deepen their experience, thus further positively promoting local identity [24, 25]. When sharing, the tourists at emotional sharing level will feel that they have got the emotions in destination other places cannot give. For example, when seeing love graffiti in romantic Dali, the tourists feel unswerving love. When sharing, they focus on emotional sharing, and the tourist’s emotions are strengthened in sharing, which further enhances local identity.

Through sharing on social media, tourists will deliberately learn local customs and cultures. In order to ensure the content they share is correct, they will even search online or ask the natives if the information is correct. “They eat the smelly food I’ve never seen, but I need to know what exactly the food was, so I can describe to others.” From perspective of social experience, social media is a platform for tourists to show themselves. From perspective of Goffman’s drama theory, tourists’ sharing of tourism experience on social media is actually showing themselves on their self-built stage. On this stage, the sharer can show what they want to show and shape the images they want based on their own ideas. The audiences also the viewers can only receive the fixed information shown by the performer. The actors and audience are not only the viewers and the people viewed; there will be also communication between them. There are two kinds of communication including implicit communication and explicit communication. Direct interaction of likes and comments is explicit communication which can directly shorten the distance between the sharer and the viewer. Generating common cognition through viewing is implicit communication. From perspective of emotional experience, the tourists at five tourism experience levels have different emotions. The tourists at sensory experience level pay more attention to honor after sharing. The tourists at cognitive experience level and emotional experience level find themselves in sharing and pay more attention to the feeling of cognition and change during tourism. The tourists at regression tourism experience level and spiritual tourism experience level realize identity of object and themselves, and sharing is just a way for them to show the identity of object and themselves. In the process of sharing, they obtain social identity and strengthen social connection [26]. Social identity and social connection resulted from the destination will unconsciously combine with the destination and become the identity for destination finally.

4.2.3. The Impact of Sharing on Destination Choice

Sharing will not only impact this tourism but also indirectly impact next destination choice. The division of tourist sharing hierarchy verifies Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reversely. Tourists’ sharing reflects their needs, while needs decide tourists’ choice. Tourists who prefer scenery sharing have physiological needs of “rich experience, enjoy the scenery, and well-informed,” so they will be more likely to choose a destination which will directly bring sensory pleasure. The tourists who prefer emotional sharing have social needs of “tourism is a topic of conversation,” so they mostly choose a destination which will bring spiritual enjoyment. The tourists who prefer spirit sharing mostly choose a destination which will bring spiritual pleasure, and the destination chosen by them is related to spiritual, desire, and personal psychological needs which possibly exist in their mind, so they need a very strong tourism emotion experience to release themselves [27]. The spiritual pleasure chosen by spirit sharers is basically around personal memory and the past experience and belief. These experiences will possibly not be shared with anyone. Even if they are shared, others will think that they are not important. Tourists desire to travel to those places related to memories, because those places occupy an important place in tourists’ mind or self-consciousness. The tourists at this level always have needs of being respected and self-actualization. The behavior of tourism satisfies a deep psychological needs, which means reexamining the past, going over the important moments, and facing up to an element in mind [28], thus obtaining full sense of spiritual pleasure.

5. Summary

5.1. Research Significance

This paper analyzes and discusses the impact of tourism sharing on social media on the sharer’s tourism experience. With grounded theory, this paper systematically and comprehensively analyzes the three stages of sharing on social media impacts the sharer’s tourism experience, builds the process model of sharing on social media impacts the sharer’s tourism experience, supplements original knowledge system of impact of tourist sharing on tourism experience, and further enriches the behavioral process model of the impact of tourism sharing on mobile social media platform. The research shows that the impact of tourism sharing on social media on the sharer’s tourism experience is a process of weakening gradually and functions significantly at three stages. At the stage of content shared, the tourists at different tourism experience levels share significantly different contents. At the stage of sharing realization, sharing impacts the tourists’ tourism experience from three aspects: (1) tourists’ physical and mental experience. What the tourists do is not just leaving the destination, while the tourism experience begins to dissipate slowly after the sharing is completed. (2) Optimization of emotions: after-travel sharing will improve tourists’ positive experience and reduce negative experience, thus promoting more positive overall evaluation and improving tourism experience. (3) Enhancement of local attachment: sharing will enhance local identity and local familiarity, thus promoting sharing and improving tourists’ expectation for next tourism. The tourists at three different sharing preference levels choose different destinations. Although the experience enhancement resulted from tourism sharing is conditional [5], the resulting impact cannot be underestimated. Tourism industry should enhance tourists’ tourism experience at every stage to extend tourists’ tourism experience in limited space and time as much as possible. In addition, this paper also verifies the fact that Gaffman’s dramaturgical theory onstage and backstage are not completely independent but affect each other.

5.2. Management Enlightenment

This paper provides another direction of thinking for growth approach of destination. For sustainable operation of destination (enterprise), tourist satisfaction rate is an essential item to consider. Satisfactory tourism sharing is based on satisfactory tourism. The destination (enterprise) should improve the scenic spot structure first, so the tourists at every tourism level have satisfactory tourism experience [29] and find the contents which are worth sharing [30]. Second, the scenic spot contents should be enriched. In addition to scenery, the destination should pay attention to development of contents which are worth being shared by tourists at emotional sharing level and spirit sharing level. Finally, service should be standardized, allowing the tourists at all experience levels to feel high-quality travel and finish travel which is worth sharing. Complete and satisfactory experience is the only thing that gives tourists willingness to share. Sharing will increase the propaganda radius of scenic spot and accelerate the propaganda, finally achieving the goal of sustainable operation of destination.

The research results in this paper also provide some theoretical supports for marketing of destination. Firstly, the destination should deeply realize the trend that current main platform for tourists to obtain and share resources has transferred to online, so the destination should grasp the trend and combine marketing with social media. Sharing on social media has features of quick sharing and extensive content which are both strength and weakness. The tourism enterprise (destination) should flexibly make use of the strengths to improve propaganda and marketing. Secondly, it is found that sharing implements a positive marketing among the tourists. The tourism enterprise (destination) can hold some online competitions for tourism sharing and guide tourists to share after travel. In the process of sharing, tourists’ satisfaction for destination will increase, and the willingness of revisiting or visiting similar scenic spots will increase. For example, the destination can hold an activity of gift for sharing on TikTok to guide the tourists who are not willing to share to share and let the tourists who are willing to share to share more actively. But it cannot force tourists to share. Third, the tourism enterprise (destination) can discover tourists at different tourism sharing levels through big data and push the different styles of scenic spots to tourists at different sharing levels according to classification, thus publicizing the destination to tourists more specifically. For example, Tibet has wonderful scenery, and it is also the holy place in mind of a lot of tourists of faith. According to the property of content shared by tourists before, the destination should push the scenery to tourists who share and push “Tibet is the home of soul” to tourists of spirit sharing. While publicizing, the destination should notice to avoid too much difference with the reality.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Gansu Philosophy and Social Sciences Key Bidding Project “Research on the comprehensive effect of enlarged cultural tourism in Gansu” (20ZD009).

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