Exploring the Value Co-creation Mechanism in Online Travel Communities: Value Co-creators, Engagement Activities, and Interactions

Abstract

Online travel communities, with their diverse resource-based activities, serve as platforms for distinct user groups to interact and co-create unique forms of value. This research investigates the mechanisms of value co-creation in an online travel community context. By using netnography and semi-structured interviews with 32 online community users and employees, it identifies eight types of value co-creators and examines their engaged activities and interactions. The findings reveal that diverse engagement behaviors, coupled with the interconnection between online and offline interactions, facilitate the value co-creation process in an online travel community. This study advances the current tourism literature by developing a typology of value co-creators in online travel communities and sheds light on how value is co-created by multi-actors through both online and offline activities and interactions. Tourism organizations can utilize these findings to foster engagement and co-create value with and for stakeholders in online travel communities. Also available in Chinese. See Supplemental Material for details.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 16 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.