A Causal Model of the Factors Influencing Consumers' Purchasing Tourist Products on E-commerce Community Platforms

Abstract

Amid the accelerating growth of social e-commerce, consumer decision-making in tourism consumption is increasingly shaped by platform-based interactions and content engagement. This study investigates the psychological and structural mechanisms that influence consumers’ purchases of tourism products on community platforms such as TikTok, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat. A structured questionnaire targeting adult users with tourism-related platform experience was distributed using purposive and convenience sampling, resulting in 615 valid responses. The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Results show that technology acceptance, electronic service quality, and dual-process cognition significantly influence both consumer satisfaction and platform e-commerce engagement. Notably, consumer satisfaction plays a partial mediating role in these relationships, with the indirect effect from dual-process cognition to platform engagement being the strongest. Electronic service quality exhibited the highest total effect on platform engagement, and satisfaction emerged as a key predictor of consumer behavioral outcomes. These findings offer a validated empirical framework for future studies exploring digital consumer behavior in socially immersive tourism contexts.