This study performed empirical exploratory research on the
dependency of travel information sources through website attributes.
An empirical test was conducted based on a survey sample
of people who had searched for travel information using the
Internet attending graduate students in school of business in
Korea. The responses were collected and analyzed to verify
whether or not there were differences in user perceptions of website
attributes between four online tourism information sources.
Through the factor analysis, this study refined a measurement
instrument made by referring to the previous literature. Based on
the results of the test, this study further developed an instrument
to measure the major attributes (see Table 1).
A total of 110 questionnaires were distributed and this study
finally obtains the data from a total of 61 participants. Each participant
answered all of the questions for four different information
sources. The sample consisted of 42.6% male and 57.4% female participants
ranging from 20 to 59 years old, the majority of which
were in their twenties and thirties (45.9% and 39.3%). Since people
who search for tourism information using the Internet tend to be in
their twenties or thirties, this survey sample was deemed to be
suitable for use. Table 2 shows the demographics of the respondents
for the test.