An analysis of the utilization of Facebook by local Korean governments for tourism development and the network of smart tourism ecosystem

This study investigated the utilization of Facebook by local Korean governments for the purposes of tourism development. The results indicate that most local Korean governments actively manage online tools such as Facebook, to communicate with the public and offer a wide range of information to promote tourism. A notable finding is that the level oflocal governmental could affect the level of social networking site use for tourism. It is claimed that the varying level of social networking site use is because the scale of the tourism industry and the level of information and communication technology innovation could vary with different types of municipalities. Through network analyses, the study also shows that Korean local governments' Facebook pages are co-related in the Facebook system as part of a smart tourism ecosystem, and that the smart tourism ecosystem facilitated by Facebook offerings is associated with governmental utilization of Facebook for activating local tourism. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.