The Role of Social Media Use in Shaping Urban Image Perception and Its Impact on Tourism Intention: A Case Study of Shanghai's “Magic City” Image

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_83How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Social Media; City Image; Travel Intention; Algorithmic Communication; Shanghai

Abstract

With the popularity of social media, destination marketing and urban image communication have undergone profound changes. As one of China’s most international cities, Shanghai’s diverse image is constantly constructed and reconstructed in cyberspace. This study adopts the framework of “social media use → urban image perception → travel intention” to examine how social media shapes tourists’ decisions through image perception. Based on 501 valid responses, we employ descriptive statistics, reliability and validity tests, confirmatory factor analysis, multiple regression, and Bootstrap (5,000 samples, bias-corrected 95% CI) mediation analysis to construct and verify the structural model. Results show that social media use has a significant positive effect on travel intention (β = 0.282, p < .01). Economic-Spatial and Humanistic-Livable images exhibit positive indirect effects, whereas Urban Homogenization and Perceived Crowding & Hectic Pace exhibit negative ones; all four dimensions operate as partial mediators. The model fits well (CFI = 0.995, RMSEA = 0.015). These findings suggest that while social media increases the visibility of urban images, it may also intensify spectacularization and content convergence. Urban branding should balance algorithmic logic with cultural diversity to sustain image dissemination.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Xiaoang Li
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - The Role of Social Media Use in Shaping Urban Image Perception and Its Impact on Tourism Intention: A Case Study of Shanghai's “Magic City” Image
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 815
EP  - 825
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_83
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_83
ID  - Li2026
ER  -