网络信息时代,旅游虚拟社区不断涌现,并对旅游决策、旅游营销产生日益深远的影响。国外学者关注到旅游虚拟社区的影响,并由此展开了广泛的研究与探讨。通过相关文献的梳理,发现国外旅游虚拟社区研究起步较早,视角宽泛,理论日趋成熟。研究重点主要集中在成员参与需求、心理情感与成员行为、UGC行为主体、UGC价值与影响四个方面。研究方法上注重定性与定量有机结合,并借助先进的网络调查,使结论更具科学性。最后,基于国外研究现状提出值得关注的问题和方向,以期为国内相关研究与实践提供借鉴。

In recent years, the tourism sector has been experiencing continuous transformation processes caused by the development and acceptance of Information Technologies. With the rapid development of computer network technology and tourism industry, online travel communities continuously appear, and they have increasingly far-reaching influence on the decision-making behavior of tourists, as well as on tourism enterprise marketing. Overseas scholars paid close attention to the influence of online travel community, and have launched a wide range of research and discussion. Based on carding of related literatures in the past 10 years, this paper found that overseas studied on online travel community much earlier, and study perspectives were comparatively broad, theoretical research and method application was more mature. Firstly, most conclusions of existed research were hypothetical, and lack in-depth study or diachronic studies to support these conclusions, thus affecting the formation of core theory system. So far, existed research on online travel community was given priority to case study. Secondly, there still had some problems on specific research and its method, such as insufficient interpretation of mechanism, unreasonable design of structure model, unimproved survey method and fuzzy concept of online travel community. Thirdly, there had a significant contradiction between the regional limitations of most research and the internationalization of online travel community, and research conclusion was hard to provide relevant references for tourism marketing and online travel community's practice. Based on the current research situation abroad, the author argued the influence of online travel community on tourists was direct and superficial, and the profound influence on tourism industry need to be paid more attention.