Factors Influencing Online Hotel Booking: Extending UTAUT2 with Age, Gender, and Experience as Moderators

Abstract

As people feel more comfortable using the Internet, online hotel bookings has become popular in recent years. Understanding the drivers of online booking intention and behavior can help hotel managers to apply corresponding strategies to increase hotel booking rates. Thus the purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the use intention and behavioral intention of online hotel booking. The proposed model has assimilated factors from the extended Unified theory of Acceptance and use of Technology (UTAUT2) along with age, gender, and experience as moderators. Data were collected by conducting a field survey questionnaire completed by 488 participants. The results showed that behavioral intention is significantly and positively influenced by performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating condition, hedonic motivation, price value, and habit behavior. Use behavior is positively influenced by facilitating condition and hedonic motivation. As for moderators, gender moderates the relationships between performance expectancy, social influence, and behavioral intention. Age moderates the relationships between effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, and behavioral intention. Experience moderates the relationships between social influence, price value, and behavioral intention and between habit behavior and use behavior. Based on the results, recommendations for hotel managers are proposed. Furthermore, research limitations and future directions are discussed.