The influence of tourism website on tourists' behavior to determine destination selection: A case study of creative economy in Korea

The winds of Korean pop culture swept across China, Japan, and other South Asian countries, and this leads to a variety of economic and socio-cultural impacts. The Korean wave exemplifies the creative economy; creativity becomes an economic activity. Similarly, many Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) cater intangible products regarding the destination (e.g. information and images) via websites, and become a major information channel for the destination. Assuming that the official website of DMO positively affects the potential tourists' decision-making process, this paper will consider the co-relation between the qualities of the destination website and the intention to continuous use, and the subsequent effects on the intention to visit the destination. To prove the hypotheses, the modified IS success model was developed combining the information system (IS) success model with the expectation-confirmation model, and conducted a survey with the potential tourists who already have used the destination website, but have never visited Korea. The results show that all the hypotheses were supported, and that information quality, in particular, has the greatest effect on confirmation. Based on these findings, we present the theoretical and practical implications from the perspective of creative economy with suggestions for future research. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.