This study investigates the impact of short-form video content characteristics on female tourists’ travel intention by focusing on the underlying psychological mechanisms in the decision-making process. Specifically, it examines the mediating roles ...
This study investigates the impact of short-form video content characteristics on female tourists’ travel intention by focusing on the underlying psychological mechanisms in the decision-making process. Specifically, it examines the mediating roles of emotional arousal and tourism motivation. With the rapid development of digital media, short-form video content has emerged as a critical source of information and emotional stimulation influencing travel decisions. However, prior research has primarily focused on information quality and technological aspects, while relatively limited attention has been paid to emotional and motivational responses, particularly among female tourists. To address this gap, this study proposes a structural model linking content characteristics, emotional arousal, tourism motivation, and travel intention.
In this study, informativeness, entertainment, and authenticity are identified as key dimensions of short-form content characteristics and treated as exogenous variables. Emotional arousal is introduced as a central mediating variable, while tourism motivation is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of escape from daily life, personal growth, and cultural exploration. Travel intention is set as the final outcome variable. Based on this framework, a structural equation model is developed and empirically tested.
Data were collected through a survey, yielding 389 valid responses. SPSS and AMOS were employed to assess reliability, validity, and the structural model. The model demonstrated a good fit to the data (χ²=260.989, df=240, p=0.168, CFI=0.996, TLI=0.996, RMSEA=0.015, SRMR=0.033). All constructs satisfied the recommended thresholds for Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted (AVE), indicating satisfactory internal consistency and convergent validity. Discriminant validity was also confirmed using the Fornell-Larcker criterion.
The results reveal that all three content characteristics—informativeness, entertainment, and authenticity—have significant positive effects on emotional arousal, with entertainment exerting the strongest influence. This suggests that, in the context of short-form video content, hedonic and emotionally engaging elements play a more critical role than purely informational content in eliciting emotional responses among female users. Furthermore, emotional arousal significantly influences all three dimensions of tourism motivation, particularly the motivation to escape from daily life. In turn, all dimensions of tourism motivation significantly and positively affect travel intention, with escape and cultural exploration motivations showing relatively stronger effects. In addition, the bootstrapping results confirm that emotional arousal and tourism motivation jointly serve as significant serial mediators in the relationship between content characteristics and travel intention.
Theoretically, this study extends existing tourism behavior research by incorporating emotional arousal into the analytical framework and by conceptualizing tourism motivation as a multidimensional construct. It also contributes to gender-specific tourism research by focusing on female tourists. From a practical perspective, the findings suggest that short-form video content should emphasize entertainment and emotional engagement, and that content strategies should be designed to stimulate motivations related to escape and cultural exploration.
Despite its contributions, this study has several limitations, including the restricted sample and cross-sectional design. Future research is encouraged to adopt longitudinal approaches and cross-cultural comparisons, and to incorporate additional variables such as algorithmic recommendation and user-generated content characteristics.