Participation and Activity in Virtual Networks and Virtual Social Capital Tourism in Iran

The reality of current world is captured by the virtual world. Nowadays, reference groups have been transferred from real world to virtual world and comments or recommendations are often shared on online networks and prior sources of knowledge such as official institutions have become less important. The new communicative world not only connects us together but also puts us in the same situation. In fact, the media and social networks are potentially able to offer us tourism destinations. Common activities such as sharing photos and travel experiences, likes and comments connect users to social networks when they travel together and choose their tourism destinations. This article investigates the relationship between participation and activity in the Iranian Tourism virtual networks with Status of user’s social capital in tourism virtual networks. Accordingly, the main question of this article is that: what’s the impact of sharing the travel experiences, likes, comments and other activities in tourism virtual social networks on virtual social capital in these networks? Data collection method in this article based on survey method with online questionnaire that 338 members of registered users were questioned by non-random snowball sampling method. Fist, in order to make contact with users, we discussed and consulted with the Networks Administrators by the snowball method and finally, it was decided that we go into the list of member's network due to the not available and non-recording users email address in their profile and we are ads Information on our research through chat rooms. So online interviews were conducted in both Simultaneous and asynchronous. In this way, first, we make communicated with tourism virtual networks users through chat rooms and we sent online questionnaire to the online user. Then if User-selectable was not online, we sent Designed questionnaire file to the chat room and we were waiting their answer. Discussion and The results indicated that virtual social capitals of users in Iranian Tourism networks are in upward average level. In this regard, three hypothesis of four basic hypotheses were confirmed and only one hypothesis was not confirmed. This means that in the first hypothesis, the Variables of duration of user’s activity, in second hypothesis, the amount of their Participation and the number of their travel suggestions and finally In third hypothesis, the number of user’s travels had a significant relationship with their virtual social capital. But, the variable of tourism exploratory-organized had not a significant relationship with the virtual social capital. This means that the tendency of tourist users to tourism exploratory-organized doesn’t make difference in Amount of their virtual social capital. The following, Fifth hypothesis test results showed that from sum of the user's individual characteristics (gender, age, marital status, Educational Degree and Occupation), two variables of Educational Degree and Occupation have significant relationship with amount of their virtual social capital in tourism network and the variables of gender, age and marital status haven’t significant relationship with amount of their virtual social capital in tourism network. The Analysis of findings indicates that connective networks, individual’s support of each other and user’s trust in these networks is increasing. The accumulation of social capital in virtual space increases the role and impact of tourism virtual networks. All this shows that events future happen in virtual space. In this regard, also the research findings showed that how tourism destinations recommended by users. As nearly half of users (48/5 percent) have responded that they share their travels photos and videos after returning from a travel. connective networks between users in tourism virtual networks is very important, because 31/7 percent of users have stated that they can count on the help of their friends networks at the time of confrontation with problems. Even 42/4 percent of users have stated that they programming groups travel with their friend's network and only 30/6 percent of them hadn’t the same experience. Generally, confirming research hypothesis that there is a significant relationship between the Variables of duration of user’s activity and the amount of users Participation in networks and users virtual social capital shows that Active Users and with high participation have more social capital than users with lower activity and participation and they can as potential travelers to be more precise planning. In this way, it can manage tourism in real space to suit the status of activity and participation of user's networks.