CACTUS CACTUS J Tour Bus Manag Econ CACTUS – Journal of Tourism Business, Management and Economics 2247-3297 ASE Publishing House Bucharest, Romania 10.24818/CTS/7/2025/1.04 cactus-2025-4 Research Article M31, L83, Z33 Understanding how social media information intensity drives choices in tourism destinations: an exploratory study Zerouati Maouahib https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4005-5156 maouahib.zerouati@univ-setif.dz Boukhaoua Asma https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7487-7505 Setif 1 University-Ferhat ABBAS, Setif, Algeria Setif 1 University-Ferhat ABBAS, Setif, Algeria 15 6 2025 7 1 1562025 Copyright © 2025, The Author(s) 2025 The Author(s) This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Social media platforms have fundamentally changed the way tourists discover, evaluate and select destinations by amplifying electronic word of mouth. This study examines the role of information intensity, a critical dimension of electronic word of mouth, in influencing the successive decision stages of awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and destination choice. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling was used to collect survey data from100 active social media users from Algeria who had recently planned or selected a travel destination. The results show that information intensity has a significant effect on awareness and directly influences destination choice, with intermediate constructs such as interest, evaluation and trial playing an important mediating role. These results underline the importance of high quality, engaging content in increasing awareness and acceptance of destinations.

 Keywords information intensity tourism destination choice social media structural equation modelling (SEM)

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