The Impact of Social Media Influencers on Travel Decisions: The Role of Trust in the Consumer Decision-Making Journey

Today, the way tourists access and use information has changed dramatically, mainly due to the influence of social media. The main reason for the spread of social media is that it has become a tool for shaping perceptions, feelings and experiences, and hence is an important source of information in the travel decision-making process. Therefore, the purpose of this research is the influence of social media influencers on travel decisions: the role of trust in consumer decision making.

To measure the variables, it was done using a questionnaire following the research of Pop et al. (2021). The statistical population of the research included those involved in the country's tourism industry, including managers and experts of related tourism organizations, faculty members, and PhD students in Iran's tourism management. The sample size was determined to be 158 people based on Morgan's table, and the sampling method was stratified random. And the time domain of this research is 1401. It was done to test the hypotheses of the structure rate model and PLS software.

The results of the research showed that customer trust in the content produced by social media influencers has a significant effect on the desire to travel, search for information, evaluate tourist destinations, buy tourism products, travel satisfaction and share the experience of tourists.

Also, each stage of the decision-making journey moderates the effect of trust in the next stage.