Community Acceptance of Knowledge Sharing System in the Travel and Tourism Websites: an Application of an Extension of TAM

The presence of customer community in tourism websites is an added value service that enable customers to read about other tourists’ experience. This knowledge sharing of other people’s experience is perceived as more neutral and trustworthy and help to reduce tourist’s perceived risk. However, the deployment of tourist knowledge sharing through the Internet has yet to be measured. This paper presents the result of a study conducted to determine whether the perception of trust, risk and sharing have an effect on the sharing of information at the tourism website. The study was conducted, using the tourism website, www.virtualtour.com which has 400,000 members. A research team member became a member of the community group and befriended community members by taking part in the experience sharing sessions with them to gain their confidence. A survey was then conducted by sending questionnaires via personal e-mails to 1131 members and a total 262 completed questionnaires were returned and used in the analysis. The result yield preliminary evidence that perception of trust and perceived sharing resulted in positive behavioural intention of sharing. In addition, this research also produced preliminary evidence that perceived risk resulted in a negative behavioural intention of sharing. This research also contributed to the much needed measurement of users acceptance of knowledge management systems in e-commerce applications. The findings of this research is consistent with other TAM research findings especially on the constructs of perceived usefulness, ease of use and intentional behaviour.