The effect of human versus virtual influencers: The roles of destination types and self-referencing processes

Briefing Social media influencers are increasingly recognized for their ability to influence tourists' decision-making processes. The emerging phenomenon of virtual influencers presents an unprecedented challenge to their human counterparts, reshaping the dynamics of the tourism industry. Integrating different forms of destination advertising and harmonizing human and virtual influence approaches to effectively attract tourists remains a challenge. This study fills this gap examining the effectiveness of human and virtual influencers in promoting natural versus cultural destinations. Our results show that virtual influencers drive visit intentions for cultural destinations, while human influencers do so for natural destinations. Credibility and self-reference play a serial mediating role in this process. Furthermore, this study explores the moderating role of tourists' preference for originality. This research provides valuable insights for tourism industry managers who want to effectively harness the power of virtual influencers. 

Our results show that virtual influencers are more competent than human influencers in promoting cultural destinations, but human influencers are more competent in promoting natural destinations. Furthermore, we show that the assocn virtual influencers (compared to human influencers) with cultural destinations (compared to natural destinations) favor tourists' visit intentions. Source credibility and self-reference play a serial mediating role in this process. We also explore a boundary condition of this competition effect: tourists' unique preferences. In particular, when tourists' unique preferences are salient, the endorsement of virtual influencers is less effective than that of human influencers. Therefore, The current research provides insight into how travel agencies and managers can effectively leverage different types of influencers by pairing them with different types of destinations to promote tourists' visit intentions.