The Cognitive Effect of YouTube Video and User-Generated Content: A Preliminary Study

Nowadays, video-sharing social media platforms have become essential sources of information for tourists. In line with this trend, many destination marketing organizations (DMOs) formulate marketing strategies utilizing video-sharing platforms. Nevertheless, despite the extensive research on the impacts of advertising video exposure, there is a notable absence of studies that delve into the influence of user-generated content on the cognitive effect of potential tourists on destinations. To address this gap, this study aims to identify the cognitive effects based on the presence of comments (vs. absent) and different positive comment types (absent vs. opinion vs. impression vs. compliment comments) through a field experiment design. We found that the cognitive effect of YouTube videos is higher when positive comments are available. Further, impression comments had a more significant cognitive effect than the other comment types. Building upon our research findings, we propose strategies for utilizing video social media platforms from the perspective of tourism destination marketers.