Effects of three variables on tourists' information behaviors about Macao

The findings from this research extend the study of information behaviors in tourism research using the communicative action in problem solving (CAPS) framework. Data collected from a survey (N = 510) of mainland Chinese tourists in Macao show the effects of tourism stage (i.e., pretrip and posttrip), visiting history (i.e., first-time visit or repeat visit), and tourist loyalty (i.e., attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty) on their information behaviors (i.e., information acquisition, information selection, and information transmission). This study was undertaken in response to calls for practitioners and researchers in the tourism industry to further explore and extend the use of the CAPS framework to understand the complexity of information behaviors among tourists.