Influence of online hotel consumer review sites on hotel visitors’ behavioural intentions in Jordan

الملخص EN

Online consumer reviews are advantageous tools to manage the decision-making process.

nevertheless, knowledge about how consumers evaluate online consumer review sites is still sparse.

this study will examine the effect of informational and normative influences on hotel visitors’ behavioural intentions, specifically in Jordan.

a quantitative approach was used to test the model on a purposive sample of Jordanian students.

the questionnaire was distributed to 500 full-time students at the university of Jordan by e-mail and by hand and the response rate was 72.6%.

overall, the results indicate that normative and informative factors are interdependent and their combined impact is much more effective on behavioural intentions than taking each group separately.

the findings also demonstrate that the impact of informational factors is much more than that of normative cues.

in other words, consumers do not follow ratings or rankings spontaneously.

even with the availability of others’ ratings, they still rely more on strong valid written comments and recommendations to formulate their purchase intentions.

the research implications for the hospitality sector and its practices are presented and discussed in the last section.