What Drives “Group Roaming”? A Study on the Pathway of “Digital Persuasion” in Media-Constructed Landscapes Behind Chinese Conformist Travel

Zhang, Chao; Jin, Di; Li, Jingwen

doi:10.3390/bs15081056

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What Drives “Group Roaming”? A Study on the Pathway of “Digital Persuasion” in Media-Constructed Landscapes Behind Chinese Conformist Travel

by

Chao Zhang

^1,2,*

,

Di Jin

³

and

Jingwen Li

²

¹

School of Psychology, Henan University, North Section of Jinming Avenue, Kaifeng 475004, China

²

School of Journalism and Communication, Henan University, No. 379, North Section of Mingli Road, Zhengzhou 450046, China

³

School of International Journalism and Communication, Beijing Foreign Studies University, No.2 North Road, Xisanhuan, Beijing 100089, China

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Behav. Sci. 2025, 15(8), 1056; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15081056

Submission received: 6 May 2025 / Revised: 14 July 2025 / Accepted: 1 August 2025 / Published: 4 August 2025

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Abstract

In the era of digital intelligence, digital media landscapes increasingly influence cultural tourism consumption. Consumerism capitalizes on tourists’ superficial aesthetic commonalities, constructing a homogenized media imagination that leads to collective convergence in travel decisions, which obscures aspects of local culture, poses safety risks, and results in fleeting local tourism booms. In this study, semistructured interviews were conducted with 36 tourists, and NVivo12.0 was used for three-level node coding in a qualitative analysis to explore the digital media attributions of conformist travel behavior. The findings indicate that digital media landscapes exert a “digital persuasion” effect by reconstructing self-experience models, directing the individual gaze, and projecting idealized self-images. These mechanisms drive tourists to follow digital traffic trends and engage in imitative behaviors, ultimately shaping the phenomenon of “group roaming”, grounded in the psychological effect of herd behavior.

Keywords: society of the spectacle; roaming; spectacle constraint; conformity-driven tourism; digital persuasion

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MDPI and ACS Style

Zhang, C.; Jin, D.; Li, J. What Drives “Group Roaming”? A Study on the Pathway of “Digital Persuasion” in Media-Constructed Landscapes Behind Chinese Conformist Travel. Behav. Sci. 2025, 15, 1056. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15081056

AMA Style

Zhang C, Jin D, Li J. What Drives “Group Roaming”? A Study on the Pathway of “Digital Persuasion” in Media-Constructed Landscapes Behind Chinese Conformist Travel. Behavioral Sciences. 2025; 15(8):1056. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15081056

Chicago/Turabian Style

Zhang, Chao, Di Jin, and Jingwen Li. 2025. "What Drives “Group Roaming”? A Study on the Pathway of “Digital Persuasion” in Media-Constructed Landscapes Behind Chinese Conformist Travel" Behavioral Sciences 15, no. 8: 1056. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15081056

APA Style

Zhang, C., Jin, D., & Li, J. (2025). What Drives “Group Roaming”? A Study on the Pathway of “Digital Persuasion” in Media-Constructed Landscapes Behind Chinese Conformist Travel. Behavioral Sciences, 15(8), 1056. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15081056

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What Drives “Group Roaming”? A Study on the Pathway of “Digital Persuasion” in Media-Constructed Landscapes Behind Chinese Conformist Travel

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