Sharing Internship Experience on the Internet: A Study of Tourism and Hotel Management College...
-
Upload
international-federation-for-information-technologies-in-travel-and-tourism-ifitt -
Category
Travel
-
view
110 -
download
0
description
Transcript of Sharing Internship Experience on the Internet: A Study of Tourism and Hotel Management College...
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 1
Sharing Internship Experience on the Internet: A Study of Tourism and Hotel Management
College Students Lawrence FONG1, Hee Andy LEE2, Chris LUK1,
Daniel LEUNG3, & Rob LAW1
1School of Hotel & Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
2School of Tourism,The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
3Department of Tourism and Service Management,MODUL University Vienna, Austria
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 2
Agenda
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Methods
• Results
• Discussions
• Conclusions
• Q & A
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 3
Introduction
• Background
– Online media (e.g., Facebook, Internet forum, etc.) allow information disseminated to family members, friends, acquaintances, and strangers
– Internet is a major vehicle for information dissemination
– Likelihood of using various kinds of online media to
disseminate information may vary
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 4
Introduction
• Background
– No study on college students' internship experience sharing behaviour on the Internet
– Understanding online sharing of personal experience is of great interest among researchers
– Internship officers need to know where the interns share experience, for improvement of internship program
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 5
Introduction
• Objectives
– To investigate whether the likelihood of sharing internship experience on these online media varies with gender and Internet usage
– To compare tourism and hotel management college students' likelihood of sharing internship experience on different online media
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 6
Literature Review
• Online Information Dissemination Media– Given the wide variety of online media, an understanding of the
common characteristics of these media is necessary
– Online-personal media: the online information dissemination media that receivers are known to the senders (e.g., emails, social networking sites, etc.)
– Online-collective media: the online information dissemination media that receivers are unknown to the senders (e.g., Internet forums, weblogs, etc.)
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 7
Literature Review
• Social ties & Information dissemination– Social ties: social relationship between the sender and
receiver (Brown & Reingen, 1987)
– Strong ties: characterised by individuals with similar attributes
• Strong ties (e.g., close friends and family members)
• Weak ties (e.g., acquaintances and strangers)
– Weak ties: characterised by heterophilous individuals
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 8
Literature Review• ... continued– Self-categorisation theory: consider belonging to a group
and emphasize the similarities among in-group members and distinctions from out-group members (Turner et al., 1987)– Sharing of information should be more likely inside the group, characterising by strong ties and homophilous members (Lai & Wong, 2002)
– H1: Online-personal media are more likely to be used by tourism and hotel management college students to share internship experience than online-collective media
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 9
Literature Review
• Gender & Online Information Dissemination
– Gender effect on online behaviour is inconclusive (Akman & Mishra, 2010; Thayer & Sukanya, 2006; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007)
– Gender moderates decision making (Kim et al., 2007)
– Females have more strong tie networks (Ibarra, 1997)
– Females use the Internet to maintain existing relationships, but males use Internet for developing new relationships (Sheldon, 2008)
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 10
Literature Review
• ... continued
– H3: When sharing internship experience, male tourism and hotel management college students are more likely to use online-collective media than their female counterparts
– H2: When sharing internship experience, female tourism and hotel management college students are more likely to use online-personal media than their male counterparts
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 11
Literature Review
• Internet Usage & Online Information Dissemination
– High Internet usage leads to more online communications (Thayer & Sukanya, 2006)
– When sharing internship experience, tourism and hotel management college students with high Internet usage are more likely to use (H4: online-personal, H5: online-collective) media than their low Internet usage counterparts
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 12
Hypotheses• H1: Online-personal > Online-collective
• H2: Females > Males on Online-personal
• H3: Males > Females on Online-collective
• H4: High usage > Low usage on Online-personal
• H5: High usage > Low usage on Online-collective
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 13
Methods• Participants:
– Gender and Internet usage (20 hours or below / Above 20 hours) (Assael, 2005)
– No non-response bias based on Mann-Whitney Tests
– Hotel & tourism management students in a Hong Kong University
• 52 completed questionnaires:– Likelihood of using the two online media (7-point scale)
• Online survey
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 14
Results• H1: Online-personal > Online-collective - Confirmed
• H2: Females > Males on Online-personal - No difference• H3: Males > Females on Online-collective - Confirmed
Notes. ** p < .01; * p < .05
Wilcoxon Signed Rank test (n = 51)
Personal - M (Mdn) Collective - M (Mdn) Z-value
4.98 (5.00) 4.31 (5.00) -3.03**
Mann-Whitney Test – Exact Test Method
Male (n = 8) Female (n = 41) Z-value
Personal: M (Mdn) 4.88 (5.00) 4.95 (5.00) -.17
Collective: M (Mdn) 5.25 (5.50) 4.12 (4.00) -1.93*
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 15
Results• H4: High usage > Low usage on Online-personal - No difference• H5: High usage > Low usage on Online-collective - No difference
Mann-Whitney Test – Exact Test Method
High (n = 29) Low (n = 22) Z-value
Personal: M (Mdn) 5.21 (5.00) 4.68 (5.00) -1.28
Collective: M (Mdn) 4.28 (5.00) 4.36 (4.00) -.09
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 16
Discussions• Online-personal > Online-collective
– Share with strong ties members
– Share with homophilous members (e.g., classmates)– Asians’ collectivism may enhance support of in-group interest (Triandis et al., 1988; Wagner III, 1995)
• Female = Male on Online-personal– Concur with no gender effect on online-communication
(Teo & Lim, 2000; Thayer & Sukanya, 2006; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007)
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 17
Discussions• Male > Female on Online-collective
– Males like to develop new relationship online (Sheldon, 2008)
– Lower risk-taking propensity of females (Byrnes et al., 1999) may hinder their willingness to share with strangers
• High usage = Low usage on both Online Media– Internet usage and familiarity are unable to explain online
information sharing
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 18
Conclusions• Strength of social ties is of concern in internship experience sharing• Internship officers and industry practitioners connect to students via
social networking sites prior to the commencement of internship
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 19
Conclusions• Limitations
– Small sample size & low response rate
– Data collection in one school limits generalisability
– Uneven mixture of male and female respondents
• Future Studies– Examining the influences of social ties, homophily, and self-
categorisation on the use of online media for sharing
– Replicating the study in a context other than internship experience sharing
ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 20
Thank You!
Q&A