Sharing Internship Experience on the Internet: A Study of Tourism and Hotel Management College Students
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The document explores the sharing of internship experiences by tourism and hotel management students through various online media, highlighting differences based on gender and internet usage. The study finds that students prefer online-personal media for sharing experiences, with no significant gender difference in personal sharing, but a preference for online-collective media among males. Limitations include a small sample size and specific context, suggesting the need for future research on social ties and media use in sharing experiences.
Sharing Internship Experience on the Internet: A Study of Tourism and Hotel Management College Students
- 1. Sharing Internship Experience on the Internet: A Study of Tourism and Hotel Management College Students Lawrence FONG1, Hee Andy LEE2, Chris LUK1, Daniel LEUNG3, & Rob LAW1 School of Hotel & Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong 2 School of Tourism, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia 3 Department of Tourism and Service Management, MODUL University Vienna, Austria 1 ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 1
- 2. Agenda • Introduction • Literature Review • Methods • Results • Discussions • Conclusions • Q&A ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 2
- 3. Introduction • Background – Internet is a major vehicle for information dissemination – Online media (e.g., Facebook, Internet forum, etc.) allow information disseminated to family members, friends, acquaintances, and strangers – Likelihood of using various kinds of online media to disseminate information may vary ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 3
- 4. Introduction • Background – Understanding online sharing of personal experience is of great interest among researchers – No study on college students' internship experience sharing behaviour on the Internet – Internship officers need to know where the interns share experience, for improvement of internship program ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 4
- 5. Introduction • Objectives – To compare tourism and hotel management college students' likelihood of sharing internship experience on different online media – To investigate whether the likelihood of sharing internship experience on these online media varies with gender and Internet usage ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 5
- 6. Literature Review • Online Information Dissemination Media – Given the wide variety of online media, an understanding of the common characteristics of these media is necessary – Online-personal media: the online information dissemination media that receivers are known to the senders (e.g., emails, social networking sites, etc.) – Online-collective media: the online information dissemination media that receivers are unknown to the senders (e.g., Internet forums, weblogs, etc.) ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 6
- 7. Literature Review • Social ties & Information dissemination – Social ties: social relationship between the sender and receiver (Brown & Reingen, 1987) • Strong ties (e.g., close friends and family members) • Weak ties (e.g., acquaintances and strangers) – Strong ties: characterised by individuals with similar attributes – Weak ties: characterised by heterophilous individuals ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 7
- 8. Literature Review • ... continued – Self-categorisation theory: consider belonging to a group and emphasize the similarities among in-group members and distinctions from out-group members (Turner et al., – 1987) of information should be more likely inside the Sharing group, characterising by strong ties and homophilous members (Lai & Wong, 2002) – H1: Online-personal media are more likely to be used by tourism and hotel management college students to share internship experience than online-collective media ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 8
- 9. Literature Review • Gender & Online Information Dissemination – Gender moderates decision making (Kim et al., 2007) – Gender effect on online behaviour is inconclusive (Akman & Mishra, 2010; Thayer & Sukanya, 2006; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007) – Females have more strong tie networks (Ibarra, 1997) – Females use the Internet to maintain existing relationships, but males use Internet for developing new relationships (Sheldon, 2008) ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 9
- 10. Literature Review • ... continued – H2: When sharing internship experience, female tourism and hotel management college students are more likely to use online-personal media than their male counterparts – H3: When sharing internship experience, male tourism and hotel management college students are more likely to use online-collective media than their female counterparts ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 10
- 11. Literature Review • Internet Usage & Online Information Dissemination – High Internet usage leads to more online communications (Thayer & Sukanya, 2006) – When sharing internship experience, tourism and hotel management college students with high Internet usage are more likely to use (H4: online-personal, H5: onlinecollective) media than their low Internet usage counterparts ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 11
- 12. Hypotheses • H1: Online-personal > Online-collective • H2: Females > Males on Online-personal • H3: Males > Females on Online-collective • H4: High usage > Low usage on Online-personal • H5: High usage > Low usage on Online-collective ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 12
- 13. Methods • Participants: – Hotel & tourism management students in a Hong Kong University • Online survey • 52 completed questionnaires: – Likelihood of using the two online media (7-point scale) – Gender and Internet usage (20 hours or below / Above 20 hours) (Assael, 2005) – No non-response bias based on Mann-Whitney Tests ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 13
- 14. Results • H1: Online-personal > Online-collective - Confirmed Wilcoxon Signed Rank test (n = 51) Personal - M (Mdn) Collective - M (Mdn) Z-value 4.98 (5.00) 4.31 (5.00) -3.03** • H2: Females > Males on Online-personal - No difference • H3: Males > Females on Online-collective - Confirmed Mann-Whitney Test – Exact Test Method Male (n = 8) Female (n = 41) Z-value Personal: M (Mdn) 4.88 (5.00) 4.95 (5.00) -.17 Collective: M (Mdn) 5.25 (5.50) 4.12 (4.00) -1.93* Notes. ** p < .01; * p < .05 ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 14
- 15. Results • H4: High usage > Low usage on Online-personal - No difference • H5: High usage > Low usage on Online-collective - No difference Mann-Whitney Test – Exact Test Method High (n = 29) Low (n = 22) Z-value Personal: M (Mdn) 5.21 (5.00) 4.68 (5.00) -1.28 Collective: M (Mdn) 4.28 (5.00) 4.36 (4.00) -.09 ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 15
- 16. Discussions • Online-personal > Online-collective – Share with strong ties members – Share with homophilous members (e.g., classmates) – Asians’ collectivism may enhance support of in-group interest (Triandis et al., 1988; Wagner III, 1995) • Female = Male on Online-personal – Concur with no gender effect on online-communication (Teo & Lim, 2000; Thayer & Sukanya, 2006; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007) ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 16
- 17. Discussions • Male > Female on Online-collective – Males like to develop new relationship online (Sheldon, 2008) – Lower risk-taking propensity of females (Byrnes et al., 1999) may hinder their willingness to share with strangers • High usage = Low usage on both Online Media – Internet usage and familiarity are unable to explain online information sharing ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 17
- 18. Conclusions • Strength of social ties is of concern in internship experience sharing • Internship officers and industry practitioners connect to students via social networking sites prior to the commencement of internship ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 18
- 19. Conclusions • Limitations – Data collection in one school limits generalisability – Small sample size & low response rate – Uneven mixture of male and female respondents • Future Studies – Examining the influences of social ties, homophily, and selfcategorisation on the use of online media for sharing – Replicating the study in a context other than internship experience sharing ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 19
- 20. Thank You! Q&A ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 20