With the rapid development of the Internet, many social media platforms based on user-generated content have emerged, such as foreign Facebook, Twitter, etc., domestic WeChat Moments, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, etc. Distinctive social media platforms have enabled virtual interaction between people, and people are increasingly using the web to share information.
Mobile social media is defined as a new online medium that provides users with a space to participate, open communication, dialogue, community building, and connection.
These features enable the creation and communication of user-generated content. Mobile social media has become an important platform for users to share life content in real time, and an important channel for seeking and obtaining information.
Mobile social media software of all kinds has become a must-have for almost all mobile users, about half of mobile phone users open and use at least one social media application more than three times a day, and about four-fifths of Internet users spend at least one hour or more on social media software.
Trendy social media platforms such as Weibo, WeChat Moments, and QQ Space have attracted hundreds of millions of users. Weibo's user development report shows that hundreds of millions of "likes" are posted on Weibo every day, and hundreds of millions of pictures are uploaded.
In addition to having a very large user base, Weibo also encourages frequent interaction between users through mutual "likes", comments, online chats, etc.
Among the information that users share on various social media platforms, photo sharing is especially favored by users. As far as mainland tourist users are concerned, sharing personal travel experiences on social media platforms has become very popular.
As tourism and leisure gradually become the representative of personal life, social media platforms also provide a platform for tourists to display their quality of life, and tourists post their travel photos on social media platforms such as Moments or Weibo to share their travel experience with others.
Especially during the holidays, various social media platforms have become online exhibitions of world beauty. All kinds of social media almost include text, pictures, videos and other diversified forms of information release, among which, sharing one's own travel photos is the most common form of sharing, which is also easy to attract the attention of others.
The process of photo sharing is accompanied by the emergence of various interpersonal connections, and this social connection brought by photo sharing can meet some or some needs of the sharer, and at the same time, tourists can feel social support from the Internet.
Network social support refers to the social support felt by network users from the virtual network world in terms of emotions, information, etc., which is an extension and supplement of social support in real life.
Happiness is an important indicator to measure people's quality of life, and it is also a hot field for current scholars. Throughout the previous research on happiness, happiness includes social well-being, psychological well-being and subjective well-being.
As people are increasingly active on major social media platforms, online virtual interaction has become an important part of interpersonal communication, and the relationship between online social support and happiness obtained by users in online communities has also attracted the attention of many scholars.
Liang Xiaoyan, Gao Zhixu and others found that college students' social support from the Internet can effectively strengthen the sense of belonging to the online virtual community, thereby improving their sense of happiness.
Liang Dongqing also believes that online social support is an important factor in subjective well-being. The survey results of Niu Gengfeng, Bao Na and others show that online social support has a positive impact on personal self-esteem.
There are many motivations for people to share information on social media platforms, such as self-presentation, pleasure, social integration, etc., and many studies have confirmed that these motivations can effectively improve the happiness of the sharer.
Therefore, in the field of photo sharing, can the motivation for sharing travel photos also promote the happiness of the sharer? This is a question worth studying. At present, there is not much research on the motivation of tourists to share travel photos, and there is also little research on the relationship between tourists' motivation to share photos and happiness.
Based on the above background, the study only focuses on the field of tourists' photo sharing, discusses the impact of tourists' photo sharing motivation on happiness, and examines whether the network social support generated by photo sharing plays a regulating role in the relationship between the first two, in order to further supplement relevant theoretical research and provide a certain reference for the operation and management of tourist destinations.
Research significance
Theoretically, the influence of tourists' photo sharing motivation on happiness is studied, and the moderating effect of online social support is added to the model, and the research conclusions are helpful to enrich and improve the motivation theory, happiness theory and network social support theory.
In addition, previous studies have focused on the entire field of online information sharing, and there are few studies on the specific field of photo sharing, and the relationship between tourists' photo sharing motivation, happiness and online social support has not been further empirically documented.
In practice, the study uses online social support as a moderating variable to study the impact of tourists' photo sharing motivation on happiness, which helps destination managers and marketers to deeply understand and grasp the psychological needs hidden behind tourists' photo sharing.
Therefore, it is conducive to targeted management and marketing, which is of great practical significance for improving tourist satisfaction, loyalty and building tourism destination brands.
The research conclusions of the study can also provide a basis for tourism related enterprises, so that enterprises can provide tourism products that meet the needs of tourists, enhance the competitiveness of enterprises, and promote the economic development of tourism destinations; At the same time, the study of the motivation of travel photo sharing can also provide a reference for social media platform designers, optimize social platform design, and attract more users.
Conclusion of the study
Based on the motivation theory and happiness theory, the study designed the measurement scale of tourists' photo sharing motivation, happiness and online social support, and used factor analysis, correlation analysis, hierarchical regression analysis and other analysis methods to study the influence mechanism of tourists' photo motivation on tourists' happiness.
The following main conclusions are drawn:
(1) Tourists' motivation for photo sharing has a positive impact on social well-being. Specifically, reputation and self-development motivation had a significant positive impact on social cognition in social well-being, but had a non-significant positive impact on social contribution.
The motivation of reciprocity and social integration had a significant positive impact on social contribution and social realization in social well-being, but the positive impact on social cognition was not significant. Pleasure and self-presentation motivation have a significant positive impact on social contribution and social realization in social well-being. The only significant positive effects on social cognition are reputation and self-presentation motivation.
Reciprocity and social inclusion motivation, pleasure and self-presentation motivation had significant positive effects on social contribution, and the influence of reciprocity and social integration motivation was slightly greater than that of pleasure and self-presentation motivation.
Reciprocity and social integration motivation, pleasure and self-presentation motivation had significant positive effects on social realization, and the degree of influence of pleasure and self-presentation motivation was greater than that of reciprocity and social integration motivation.
(2) Tourists' photo sharing motivation has a positive effect on psychological well-being. Specifically, reputation and self-development motivation, reciprocity and social inclusion motivation, pleasure and self-presentation motivation all had significant positive effects on psychological well-being.
Pleasure and self-presentation motivation have a greater impact than reputation and self-development motivation and reciprocity and social integration motivation, and the latter two have about the same degree of influence.
(3) Tourists' photo sharing motivation has a positive effect on subjective well-being. Specifically, reputation and self-development motivation had a significant positive effect on life satisfaction in subjective well-being. Reciprocity and social integration motivation had a significant positive effect on subjective well-being and life satisfaction, but had a negative effect on positive emotions.
Pleasure and self-presentation motivation had a significant positive effect on positive emotions in subjective well-being, but had a non-significant positive effect on life satisfaction. Reputation and self-presentation motivation, reciprocity and social integration motivation have a significant positive impact on life satisfaction, and reputation and self-development have a greater impact than reciprocity and social integration.
Only pleasure and self-presentation motivation have a significant positive impact on positive emotions; Reputation and self-development motivation, reciprocity and social inclusion motivation, pleasure and self-presentation motivation had no significant positive effect on negative emotions.
(4) Online social support plays a positive role in the impact of tourists' photo sharing motivation on social well-being. That is, the support of the network society plays a positive regulating role in the influence of tourists' photo sharing motivation on social cognition, but the moderating role in the impact of tourists' photo sharing motivation on social contribution and social realization is not obvious.
(5) Network social support plays a negative moderating role in the influence of tourists' photo sharing motivation on psychological well-being. This is inconsistent with the research hypothesis, and the research hypothesis does not hold.
(6) Online social support plays a partially moderating role in the influence of tourists' photo sharing motivation on subjective well-being. That is, the support of the network society plays a positive role in the influence of tourists' photo sharing motivation on life satisfaction and positive emotions.
Innovative points
(1) The study fully draws on the research results at home and abroad, combines the characteristics of mainland tourists and the current situation of the environment, and through discussion and thinking with experts, constructs a tourist photo sharing motivation scale and a happiness scale containing social well-being, psychological well-being and subjective well-being in line with the characteristics of mainland tourists.
In the process of empirical analysis, the scale passed the reliability and validity test, which proved that it had good reliability and internal consistency, and laid a certain foundation for subsequent related research.
(2) Previous studies have focused on the entire field of online information sharing, and there are few studies on the specific field of photo sharing, and the exploration of the subdivision of tourists' photo sharing motivation will help improve the research in this specific field.
(3) This paper constructs and validates a theoretical model of the relationship between tourists' photo sharing motivation and happiness with online social support as the moderating variable.
The research combines motivation theory, happiness theory, social support theory and related theoretical achievements, puts forward relevant hypotheses, and tests the influence relationship of various dimensions through empirical analysis, and the research is innovative.