Purpose

This study aims to explore the role of social media visual posts (known as foodstagramming) on restaurant visit intention. Drawing on the heuristic–systematic model and normative focus theory, this research introduces a framework that assesses the effects of key foodstagramming attributes – vicarious expression, aesthetic appeal and post popularity – and the mediating roles of goal relevance and mimicking desire, in the process.

Design/methodology/approach

Structural equation modelling was performed to test the proposed model using a sample of tourists (n = 377) and residents (n = 341). Multi-group analysis was performed to compare the differences between these groups.

Findings

Results reveal that mimicking desire and goal relevance influence restaurant visit intention; however, mimicking desire has a stronger influence than goal relevance. Little difference was found between the tourist and the resident groups in the proposed relationships, except that vicarious expression positively influences mimicking desire in the tourist group but not in the resident group.

Practical implications

This study guides restauranteurs and social media influencers (foodstagrammers). It shows that consumers value the textual content and aesthetic appeal of photos over the popularity of a post. It also indicates that vicarious expression is more important for tourists than for residents.

Originality/value

This research advances social media marketing literature by proposing a new information processing framework. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first studies to explore the impact of visual post attributes on individual decision-making behaviours through socially acceptable norms.

中文翻译：

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美食贴文如何影响餐厅访问意向：目标相关性和模仿欲望的中介作用

 目的

本研究旨在探讨社交媒体视觉帖子（称为 foodstagramming）对餐厅访问意图的作用。本研究借鉴启发式系统模型和规范焦点理论，引入了一个框架来评估关键食品图文属性（替代表达、审美吸引力和后流行度）的影响，以及在此过程中目标相关性和模仿欲望的中介作用。

设计/方法论/途径

使用游客 ( n = 377) 和居民 ( n = 341) 样本进行结构方程建模以测试所提出的模型。进行多组分析以比较这些组之间的差异。

 发现

结果表明，模仿欲望和目标相关性影响餐厅光顾意愿；然而，模仿欲望的影响力比目标相关性的影响力更大。在所提出的关系中，游客和居民群体之间几乎没有发现差异，只是替代表达对游客群体中的模仿欲望有积极影响，但对居民群体中没有影响。

 实际影响

这项研究为餐馆老板和社交媒体影响者（foodstagrammers）提供指导。这表明消费者更看重照片的文字内容和审美吸引力，而不是帖子的受欢迎程度。这也表明，替代性表达对于游客来说比对于居民来说更重要。

 原创性/价值

这项研究通过提出一种新的信息处理框架来推进社交媒体营销文献。据作者所知，这项研究是首批通过社会可接受的规范探索视觉帖子属性对个人决策行为影响的研究之一。