How does government microblog affect tourism market value? The perspective of signaling theory

ABSTRACT

The emotion of social media users has been found to impact market value, but the mechanism of emotion transmission needs to be further explored. Based on the signaling theory, this study formulates the hypothesis that government microblog affects tourism market value by affecting consumers' emotion. A total of 10020 pieces of observation data on four famous Chinese scenic spots are analyzed with text analysis technique, and the correlations between government microblog emotion, comment emotion, and market value are confirmed. Besides, the moderating roles played by the COVID-19 epidemic and tourism attention are verified, and the crowding-out effect of tourism attention on comment emotion is validated. This study provides new understandings of signal transmission as well as practical suggestions for promoting the development of tourism through government social media in the context of COVID-19.