Dimensions of Social Capital for Tourists’ Online Knowledge Sharing: A Comparison Between Tripadvisor & Facebook

This paper examines tourists’ knowledge sharing behavior in social media. Based on the social capital theory, we aim to identify factors influencing three dimensions of social capital (cognitive, relational and structural dimensions) in two different types of social media (TripAdvisor and Facebook). We propose a structural model that connects main dimensions of social capital with knowledge sharing as an ultimate dependent variable. An empirical survey was conducted in Spain with a general consumer sample. The baseline model was validated with acceptable fit indexes. In terms of multigroup analysis, our results indicate that there are important differences in the hypothesized relationship among the constructs between TripAdvisor and Facebook. In closing, implications are discussed.