The role of online travel reviews in evolving tourists’ perceived destination image

ABSTRACT Online travel reviews play a vital role in the formation of a destination image. However, the mechanism of how that happens is still relatively unknown. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model and the cognitive–affective-conative model of destination image, this study aims to explore the impact of specific travel review attributes on cognitive, affective, and conative images through the central route and the peripheral route of persuasion. An experiment design survey with four scenarios (i.e. concrete vs. abstract × 5-star rating vs. 1-star rating) was applied in this study. A total of 1,305 Chinese participants were involved in this experiment, and compared their perception of Santa Claus Village, Finland, before and after reading different scenarios’ travel reviews. The results reveal that high rating reviews change cognitive image much more than low rating reviews. Low rating reviews have a large impact on the affective image. Under the high rating scenario, the concrete travel review improves the destination image more than the abstract travel review. Under the low rating scenario, the deterioration of abstract travel review on destination image is larger than concrete travel review. Moreover, both the central and peripheral cues of travel reviews affect tourist destination image formation.