The Human Side of Service Engineering, Vol. 62, 2022, 1–7
https://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1002533

Influencer Attributes andCharacterizations on Tourists’ Intention
to Revisit Destination in Social Media
Influencer Marketing
Kenta Ichii1 and Hisashi Masuda2
1 FunMake, K708 North building Grand Front Osaka 3-1 Ofukacho kitaku Osaka

530-0011, Japan
2 Faculty of Global Engagement, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, 6 Kasame-cho,Saiin, Ukyo-ku, Kyoto 615-8558, JapanABSTRACT
Social media influencer marketing has recently received significant attention. However, this kind of social media influencer marketing has not been fully demonstrated
in the context of tourism destination management/marketing. This study developeda research model based on the theory of persuasion, consisting of three influencer
attributes and three characterizations as antecedents of revisit intention to destination. Data were collected through an experimental survey for respondents who live inTokyo and Osaka in Japan. Here, two YouTubers (a male and a female) created eachtourism promotion video about one Kyoto cuisine restaurant in Kyoto. Respondents
were assigned to a group to watch one of the videos, and after watching the video,
they answered questions about the YouTuber and their intention to revisit the tourist
destination via a web questionnaire. The study found that PSR (Parasocial relationship) had a significantly positive impact on revisit intentions to destination relative
to other characterizations on all groups. But the personal attributes positively related
to PSR differed depending on the YouTubers and the respondents’ place of residence. Therefore, tourism video marketing strategies utilizing social media influencers
in destination marketing need to be fine-tuned based on the influencer’s personal
attributes, characterizations considering the targets’ place of residence.
Keywords: Social media influencer marketing, Destination marketing, Para-social relationship,
Trustworthiness, Intention to revisit a destination

INTRODUCTION

Social media influencer marketing has recently received significant attention.
The amount of investment in influencer marketing will be $15 billion by 2022
(Schomer, 2019). In contrast to traditional marketing channels, companies
are increasingly emphasizing the importance of collaborating with influencer who are closer to the customer. The number of studies on this type ofinfluencer marketing is also on the rise (Hwang and Zhang, 2018; de Bérailet al., 2019; Munnukka et al., 2019).

© 2022. Published by AHFE Open Access. All rights reserved.

1

2Ichii and Masuda

In the field of influencer marketing in social media, many studies havevalidated Parasocial Relationship (PSR) formation between influencers andfollowers as an important construct. PSR is a construct that describes pseudorelationships formed by audiences toward information disseminators on themedia (Horton and Wohl, 1956). This concept has been emerged in masscommunication research, but it has also been used to explain the influenceof social media influencer (Lee and Watkins, 2016; Sokolova and Kefi, 2020).
However, this kind of social media influencer marketing has not been fully
demonstrated in the context of tourism destination management/marketing.
In tourism management, it is important to strengthen the brand of the tourism destination itself in addition to increasing the performance of the various
individual local stakeholders. How to improve the brand of a tourist destination through the promotion of local tourism businesses is an important
perspective for destination management organizations (DMOs).
The purpose of this study is to analyze how the tourism promotion by local
tourism businesses through video by influencers affects the evaluation of thedestination by its viewers from the perspective of social media influencer
marketing. In other words, we will examine the effects of tourism marketingon destination brands through influencer-based tourism video promotion inindividual businesses such as local cuisine restaurant. In this way, we aim toextend the perspective of social media influencer marketing research to thecontext of destination management/marketing.
RESEARCH MODEL

In this study, referring to related research (Masuda et al., 2022) and basedon persuasion theory, we developed a hypothesis-based research model consisting of three influencer’s personal attributes (attitude homophily, physicalattractiveness, and social attractiveness) and three characteristics (trustworthiness, perceived expertise, and PSR) as antecedents of intention to revisit atourist destination (Fig. 1). Viewers of tourism video promotion by an influencer can rate the influencer and the destination after watching the promotion
video. In this paper, we examine the impact of influencer attributes and thecharacteristics on the evaluation of the tourism destination itself.
METHODOLOGYTo test our hypothesis, we created two types of tourism promotion videos
and compare the viewer’s evaluation of them to examine the differences intheir effectiveness. For this experiment, we prepared two videos that wascomposed of the experience of eating and drinking a same menu at a Kyoto
cuisine restaurant as a one of tourist attractions by different two creators(male and female). The targeted destination is Kyoto City which is one of thefamous sightseeing areas in Japan. The information presented in the videos
is selected from the perspective of each creator. The first one is a video inwhich a male YouTuber himself gives an explanation. The second one is avideo created by a female YouTuber. The videos are structured as follows:
begin as they enter the restaurant, take their seat, watch preparations of theInfluencer Attributes and Characterizations on Tourists’3

Figure 1: Proposed research model.

cuisine food, eat, give their impressions while closing the video. The videos
are approximately 7 minutes long.
For this survey, residents of areas near and far from the tourist destination
will be targeted as respondents. Specifically, the areas are Osaka and Tokyo inJapan. Osaka is a close area to Kyoto, and Tokyo is far area. The reason why
we chose to focus on two regions this time is two. One is that the ease of accessto tourist attractions differs between regions close to and far from Kyoto
in the COVID-19 disaster, which is expected to lead to differences in theevaluation of tourist destinations. Second, the YouTubers in this experimentare active in the vicinity of the target tourist destination. Therefore, theyshare a common sphere of life with viewers in residential areas close to tourist
destinations, and the differences of influence may be observed against the far
residents of the destination.
The survey question items in the evaluation of tourism promotion videos
were constructed with reference to extant literature. In terms of influencer’s
personal attributes, the first construct on attitude homophily like a conceptof similarity between video viewers and distributors was adapted from Louand Kim, 2019. The physical attractiveness and social attractiveness werebased on Duran and Kelly (1988). Next, as for the influencer characteristics,
trustworthiness and perceived expertise were constructed based on Lou andKim (2019). The PSR was constructed based on Rubin and Perse (1987). As atourism marketing outcome, intention to revisit a destination was used basedon Tosun (2015).
The data for the verification was collected in September 2021 from Japanese residents in Tokyo and Osaka, who had visited the tourist destination(Kyoto City) as a tourist within the past five years. Respondents were askedquestions about the content of the video and their intention to revisit thedestination (Kyoto) after watching the designated video embedded in theweb questionnaire. The respondents were divided into four groups based on
their region of residence and video type. The descriptive statistics of the dataobtained in this study are as follows (Table 1).

Ichii and Masuda

4

Table 1. Profiles of the Respondent (n = 243) .

Characteristics
GenderMaleFemale
I don’t want to answer.
Ageless than 20
20–29
30–39
40–49
50–59
60–69
more than 70
Prior knowledge of the target restaurant
Yes, I knew.
No, I didn’t know.
Prior knowledge of the video performer
Yes, I knew.
No, I didn’t know.
Type of video viewed
Tokyo resident/male video
Tokyo resident/female video
Osaka resident/male video
Osaka resident/female video

Frequency (n)Percentage (%)

13799257.56
41.60
0.84

31232
49
72
47
25

1.25
5.00
13.33
20.4230.00
19.58
10.42

20223

8.23
91.77

15228

6.17
93.83

616161
60

25.10
25.10
25.10
24.69

As a hypothesis testing method, PLS-SEM (Partial Least Squares StructuralEquation Modeling) is employed. PLS-SEM has a wider range of adaptation than SEM based on covariance structure (CB-SEM) because it does
not require assumptions about the distribution of observed variables. It also
allows for robust analysis with less data used than CB-SEM (Hair et al. 2016).

RESULTSThe results of the hypothesis testing are as follows (Table 2). In particular,PSR was found to have a significant positive impact on the intention to revisit a tourist destination for all groups. Trustworthiness also had a significant
positive impact on the intention to revisit, except for Osaka residents who
watched the video of the female YouTuber. The impact of influencers’ personal attributes on PSR and trustworthiness differed from video to video.
Among Tokyo residents who watched the video of the male YouTuber, only
physical attractiveness positively influenced PSR, while attitude homophilyand social attractiveness positively influenced trustworthiness. For Osaka
residents who watched the video of the male YouTuber, attitude homophilyand social attractiveness positively influenced PSR, and only social attractiveness positively influenced trustworthiness. Among Tokyo residents who
watched the video of the female YouTuber, physical attractiveness and social

Trustworthiness → Intention to revisit a
destination
Perceived Expertise → Intention to revisit a
destination
PSR → Intention to revisit a destination
Attitude Homophily → Trustworthiness
Attitude Homophily → Perceived Expertise
Attitude Homophily → PSR
Physical Attractiveness → TrustworthinessPhysical Attractiveness → PerceivedExpertise
Physical Attractiveness → PSR
Social Attractiveness → TrustworthinessSocial Attractiveness → Perceived ExpertiseSocial Attractiveness → PSR
0.457**
0.626***
0.409*
0.327

0.510***
0.326*
0.100
0.136-0.223
0.229

0.033

0.303*

AA
A
R

AA
R
R
R
R

RA

0.259
0.456**
0.202
0.375**

0.311**
0.140
0.186
0.321**
0.184
0.332

0.213

0.315**

RA
RAA
R
RA
R
R

R

A

0.275*
0.535***
0.226
0.434**

0.479***0.294*
0.297
0.160
-0.070
0.254

0.099

0.285*

A
A
R
AA
A
R
R
R
R

R

A

0.187
0.277
0.395*
0.504***

0.399**
0.155
0.109
0.261**
0.385**
0.293

0.182

0.229

R
R
A
A

A
R
R
A
A
R

R

R

Female YouTuberTokyo Residents 4
Osaka Residents (n = 60)βResultβResultNote: Two Tailed Test; ***Significance Level = 0.1%; **Significance Level = 1%; *Significance Level = 5%; A= Accepted; R=Rejected.

H5c
H6aH6bH6c

H3
H4aH4bH4c
H5aH5bH2H1Hypothesis/Structural path

Male YouTuberTokyo Residents
Osaka Residents (n = 61)βResultβ
ResultTable 2. Results of hypothesis testing (H1-H6) for each type.

Influencer Attributes and Characterizations on Tourists’56Ichii and Masuda

attractiveness positively influenced PSR, with only social attractiveness positively influencing trustworthiness. Among Osaka residents who watchedthe video of the female YouTuber, attitude homophily and social attractiveness positively influenced PSR, while only physical attractiveness positivelyinfluenced trustworthiness.

DISCUSSIONAs the result of the hypothesis testing, we found a broad influence of PSR on
the intention to revisit a tourist destination in the tourism video marketing
utilizing YouTubers of a local cuisine restaurant. If the degree to which viewers feel a pseudo-relationship with the performer in the promotion video of anindividual tourism business is high, it may have a positive impact on the evaluation of the tourism destination itself. On the other hand, trustworthinessto the performer in the video also influenced the intention to revisit a destination, but its influence was relatively smaller than PSR. Besides, rather thanemphasizing perceived expertise of influencers, emphasizing trustworthiness
and/or PSR could have a positive impact in the tourism marketing strategy.
As for how to improve PSR and trustworthiness, there were differences in
the impact of each video and region of residence. For Tokyo residents, who
are farther away from Kyoto, social attractiveness and attitude homophily
influenced their trustworthiness, and for PSR, the influence came from physical attractiveness. For those residing in Osaka, which is close to Kyoto, there
was an influence from attitude homophily and social attractiveness regarding
PSR. The YouTubers in this case are active in the region, including Osaka,
this difference may be depended on the cultural characteristics of residents in
Osaka and Tokyo as well as the physical distances.

CONCLUSION

From the perspective of social media influencer marketing, this study examined how tourism marketing through video influencer against local cuisine
restaurant affects the evaluation of the tourism destination itself. The results
showed that PSR and trustworthiness had a widespread influence on theintention to revisit a tourist destination. Additionally, we found differences in
the formation of PSR and trustworthiness depending on the video type andthe region of residence of the viewers. Since tourism management involves
multiple stakeholders, multifaceted evaluation of tourism promotional effects
is crucial. This study provides a theoretical foundation for such multifaceted
evaluation in tourism marketing utilizing video performer. On the other hand,the characteristics of video influencer themselves vary widely. Therefore, thecurrent verification of this study cannot cover a sufficiently comprehensiveanalysis. Influencer marketing is influenced by multiple factors, including thecontent of the video. Changing the target of tourism attractions may make adifference in these relationships. In the future, it will be necessary to examine
the effectiveness of this kind of tourism marketing, considering more diverse
video explainers and the degree of recognition of video performers among

Influencer Attributes and Characterizations on Tourists’7viewers. Besides, due to cultural influences are also taken into account, international studies are needed to conduct to understand how a wide variety oftourist destinations and hotspots differ from one another in terms of tourism
promotion by utilizing influencers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This research is funded by the COVID-19 Corresponding Research of theSociety for Serviceology.
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