While travel has long been a conspicuous activity with symbolic aspects (Dimanche & Samdahl, 1994), social media has fundamentally changed how tourists symbolically convey travel images to their peers. How the vacation will be viewed by one’s peers on social media has firmly cemented itself into the tourist psyche and how they plan and travel. One scale recently developed to understand the anticipated social media attractiveness of different destinations is the Social Return Scale (SRS) (Boley et al., 2018). The SRS is designed to measure the anticipated positive social media feedback one will receive from posting pictures of a travel experience either at the destination level or at the individual business level. Anticipated “Social Return” has been shown to be a significant predictor of tourists’ intention to visit destinations such as Cuba, participate in ecotourism (Beall et al. In press), and stay at independent accommodations (Boley & Woosnam, 2020).

While the SRS has been shown to be construct valid with the ability to significantly explain intent to visit destinations and tourism businesses, it has yet to be tested outside of a North American context. Therefore, the purpose of this abstract is to test the SRS’ cross-cultural construct and predictive validity across the United States of America’s top 5 international travel markets (Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Japan, & China).

The survey research company Qualtrics was used to acquire panels of frequent international travelers from each of the U.S.’ top five markets (n=1,653; Canada=316; China=320; Japan=320; Mexico=349; U.K.=348). The translations of SRS followed Mahltora et al.’s (1996) guidelines of using native speakers to ensure functional and conceptual equivalence of the items making up the SRS. The metric equivalence of the SRS was assessed using CFA. The predictive validity of the SRS was assessed within a theory of planned behavior framework including travelers’ attitudes towards the U.S. and their perceived behavior control of visiting the U.S. within the next year (starting in June, 2020) and a more long-term time-horizon of three years to account for the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The SRS exhibited strong convergent validity across all five samples with factor loadings above 0.50 for each sample and Average Variance Extracted estimates above 50% for each sample. The SRS also had construct reliability estimates above the 0.70 threshold in each sample. The SRS also exhibited discriminant validity with AVE values exceeding squared correlation values for the constructs of “Attitudes toward the U.S.” and “Perceived Behavioral Control” of visiting the U.S. As for predictive validity, the SRS was a significant predictor of intention to visit the U.S. within the next year for the samples from Canada (β=0.38; p=.001), China (β=0.31; p=.001), Japan (β=0.20; p=.007), and the U.K. (β=0.52; p=.001). There was no significant relationship between the SRS and intention to visit the U.S. within the next year for the Mexican sample (β=0.11; p=.14). For the intentions to visit the U.S. within the next three years, those who indicated they would very likely travel within the next year to the U.S. were removed from the sample before performing the analysis. This reduced the sample from 1,653 to 1,274 (Canada=237; China=278; Japan=304; Mexico=196; U.K.=259). The SRS was found to have a diminished influence on influence on intent to visit the U.S. within the next three years. It was only a significant predictor for the sample from Canada (β=0.18; p=.007); China (β=0.25; p=.001), and Japan (β=0.14; p=.04) with the strength of the relationship slightly reduced across each sample.

With the SRS only being previously applied with in North American English-speaking countries, the purpose of this research was to assess the construct and predictive validity of the scale within the top five U.S. travel markets. The psychometric properties of the scale appear to be reliable and valid across all five samples providing further credence to the validity of the scale. The scale was also a significant predictor of intent to visit the United States in four of the five samples demonstrating the scale’s importance as an antecedent to travel behavior.

More research needs to assess the cross-cultural validity of the SRS across a variety of languages before the scale can truly be embraced as having universal validity. Second, this data collection was during the COVID-19 Pandemic. It would be prudent to continue to test “Social Return’s” influence on intent to travel as the pandemic continues on as well as when it ends to see how the influence of “Social Return” waxes and wanes with changes in restrictions and perceived risk.

Beall, J., Boley, B., Landon, A., & Woosnam, K.M. (Published Online) What drives ecotourism: environmental values or symbolic conspicuous consumption? Journal of Sustainable Tourism. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09669582.2020.1825458

Boley, B. B., Jordan, E. J., Kline, C., & Knollenberg, W. (2018). Social return and intent to travel. Tourism Management, 64, 119-128.

Boley, B. B., & Woosnam, K. M. (2020). Going Global or Going Local? Why Travelers Choose Franchise and Independent Accommodations. Journal of Travel Research, 0047287520904786.

Dimanche, F., & Samdahl, D. (1994). Leisure as symbolic consumption: A conceptualization and prospectus for future research. Leisure Sciences, 16(2), 119-129.

Malhotra, N. K., Agarwal, J., & Peterson, M. (1996). Methodological issues in cross‐cultural marketing research. International marketing review.

Munar, A. M., & Jacobsen, J. K. S. (2014). Motivations for sharing tourism experiences through social media. Tourism management, 43, 46-54.