Nowadays, video-sharing social media platforms have become essential sources of information for tourists. In line with this trend, many destination marketing organizations (DMOs) formulate marketing strategies utilizing video-sharing platforms. Nevertheless, despite the extensive research on the impacts of advertising video exposure, there is a notable absence of studies that delve into the influence of user-generated content on the cognitive effect of potential tourists on destinations. To address this gap, this study aims to identify the cognitive effects based on the presence of comments (vs. absent) and different positive comment types (absent vs. opinion vs. impression vs. compliment comments) through a field experiment design. We found that the cognitive effect of YouTube videos is higher when positive comments are available. Further, impression comments had a more significant cognitive effect than the other comment types. Building upon our research findings, we propose strategies for utilizing video social media platforms from the perspective of tourism destination marketers.
1 Introduction
Many destination marketing organizations (DMOs) are actively using a video-sharing social media platform, especially YouTube, as an advertising channel. The surveys regarding DMOs’ usage of budgets showed that most DMOs kept increasing their budget for social media advertising from a few years ago [1]. With its increasing role in influencing tourists’ choice of destination, developing an advertising strategy tailored to YouTube has become the spotlight for DMOs worldwide. One of the unique features of a video-sharing social media platform, which marketers have to consider for developing the platform-specific strategy, is the availability of others’ opinions [2]. The users of a video-sharing platform can express their opinions about a certain video by leaving comments, and the comments are shown to others. YouTube users tend to consume a video together with its comments by considering the comments as another part of the video.
It is important for DMOs to understand how the comments of a video-sharing social media platform affect viewers’ perception of a video and the video’s subject because it helps them develop platform-specific strategies [3]. Specifically, it can help DMOs realize the importance of managing comments on their content on a video-sharing social media platform and further specify how to do the management [4]. However, the effects of comments on a video-sharing social media platform on viewers’ perception of a video and the video’s subject have been scarcely discussed.
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To respond this research call, this research aims to examine the effects of comments of a video-sharing social media platform on tourists’ perception toward a video and a featured destination in the video. We examine the cognitive effect (i.e., increasing consumers’ awareness or knowledge about a video and a featured product) of different types of comments. Targeting the most popular video-sharing social media platform (i.e., YouTube), we adopt a filed-experiment approach. This research contributes to the literature on destination advertising by explaining how tourists process video and comment on the platform, providing insights from a destination marketing perspective.
2 Literature Review and Hypothesis Development
2.1 The Cognitive Effect of DMO’s YouTube Video: Presence of Comments
Previous studies found that the cognitive effect of an advertising post on a social media platform could be enhanced through its comments. Targeting a news-sharing social media platform, Witteman et al. [5] showed that while the post about home birth increased the readers’ knowledge about the post and its topic, the level of increase became greater as the number of comments increased. Kim et al. [6] focused on the Facebook post promoting the flu vaccine and found that the post’s positive impact on viewers’ attention to the vaccine became stronger when positive comments were present. Schäfer et al. [7] investigated individuals’ interest in a social issue (i.e., Diselgate) driven by Facebook posts and found that their interest further increased when comments were available. Based on these findings, we hypothesize the cognitive effect of comments to be present in a video-sharing social media platform. Thus, we propose the following hypothesis:
H1. The cognitive effect of DMOs’ YouTube video is higher when positive comments are available than when not available.
H1a. The extent to which tourists become aware of the video is greater when the video is shown together with positive comments than when only the video is shown.
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H1b. The extent to which tourists become aware of the featured destination is greater when the video is shown together with positive comments than when only the video is shown.
2.2 The Cognitive Effect of DMO’s YouTube Video: Type of Comments
We also hypothesize the cognitive effect of comments to be contingent on their content type. According to Madden et al. [8], the positive comments available on YouTube can be classified by their content, such as those expressing positive sentiment, those expressing personal views on a video or topic, those complimenting a video creator, etc. We expect that DMOs’ YouTube videos, including specific content types of positive comments, would have a higher cognitive effect than those including other types of positive comments. Thus, we hypothesized as follows:
H2. The cognitive effect of positive comments varies by their content type.
H2a. A specific content type of positive comment is more effective in increasing tourists’ awareness of the video than other types.
H2b. A specific content type of positive comment is more effective in increasing tourists’ awareness of the featured destination than other types.
3 Methodology
We utilized a YouTube video titled “Feel the Rhythm of Korea with BTS – DAEJEON ROCK N ROLL,” created by the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), as a stimulus. We collected comments written until April 30, 2023, for the relevant video and utilized them for the development of stimuli. We manually categorized the crawled comments in terms of positivity and content type based on the YouTube comment categorization scheme developed by Madden et al. [8] 200 Chinese undergraduate students from Kyung Hee University participated voluntarily, and after removing invalid cases, 161 cases were used for analysis. The participants were randomly assigned to one out of the four conditions (without comments vs. with opinion vs. with impression vs. with compliment). A brand recognition test is designed for measuring consumers’ awareness toward an advertisement and a destination. As for a video, we asked participants 1) to choose the genre of background music among several options (In the video, a specific genre of music was played and emphasized in the title) and 2) to indicate a specific scene was in the video (Was the following scene in the video?). As for a destination, we asked participants 1) to choose the name of featured city among several options (Please choose the name of the city featured in the video among the following options) and 2) to indicate the correctness of spelling of the name (Is “Daegoen” the correct spelling for the name of the city featured in the video?). Since the second question was asked four times by showing different spelling, the correction rate was coded. All the measurements appeared to participants with delay through some distraction tasks (e.g., a list of short quizzes) because it could clear their short-term memory and, thus, measure their recognition more effectively.
4 Results
With the participants’ responses to the first question about a video (In the video, a specific genre of music was played and emphasized in the title; Jazz/Blues/HipHop/Rock N Roll/Country), we conducted independent proportions test to compare the proportion of the participants with a correct answer across two conditions: ‘video without positive comments’ vs. ‘video with positive comments.’ The percentage of the ‘video with positive comments’ was more than twice higher than that of the ‘video without positive comments’ and the difference in proportions was significant across different test types (Z = 3.03, p < 0.01 in a Hauck-Anderson test; Z = 3.00, p < 0.01 in a Wald test). Thus, H1a was supported. The same analysis was repeated with the first question about a destination (Is “Daegoen” the correct spelling for the name of the city featured in the video? Yes/No). Different from the awareness of a video, the difference in proportions was not significant: the percentage of the ‘video with positive comments’ = 76.1% and that of the ‘video without positive comments’ = 75.0% (Z = 0.00, p = 0.50 in a Hauck-Anderson test; Z = 0.14, p = 0.88 in a Wald test) (see Fig. 1). H1b was not supported. In conclusion, H1 was partially supported.
Fig. 1.
Independent proportions test
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With the participants’ responses to the group of second questions about a video (Was the following scene in the video? Yes/No X 7 times with different scenes), we conducted one-way ANOVA to compare the correction rate across four conditions. The results showed a significant difference between the four conditions (F (3, 157) = 4.174, p < 0.01). Specifically, the correction rate of ‘video with impression comments’ was significantly higher than the other three conditions (Mimpression = 79.6, SD = 19.9 vs. Mnone = 67.8, SD = 19.3; Mopinion = 64.5, SD = 16.4; Mtribute = 70.5, SD = 20.1). Thus, H2a was supported. The same analysis was repeated with the group of second question about a destination (Is "Daegoen" the correct spelling for the name of the city featured in the video? Yes/No X 4 times with different spelling). According to the results, no significant difference was found across the conditions (F (3, 157) = 0.137, p = 0.938). H2b was not supported. Therefore, H2 was partially supported.
5 Conclusion
This preliminary study examined the cognitive effects of DMOs-provided YouTube videos and user-generated content on potential tourists. We offer both practical and academic implications. Firstly, while existing literature separates studies on YouTube videos or user-generated content, this study stands out by comparing the cognitive effectiveness of YouTube videos by considering the presence of comments and the types of comments. Indeed, these results are expected to provide DMOs with guidelines for managing comments to enhance destination advertising effectiveness. However, this study has limitations and future challenges. Initially, the participants in the preliminary study were limited to Chinese international students. In future research, it is necessary to compare effectiveness based on nationality or cultural dimensions and to investigate disparities in the impact of comments on video platforms other than YouTube. Furthermore, in future research, we anticipate that comparing elements that can impact users’ emotional arousal, such as visual and audio components, apart from the effectiveness of comments, will provide valuable insights to tourism marketers and DMOs [9, 10].
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