Adoption of mobile route planning applications for Backpackers enroute

Backpackers take advantage of low-budget airfares, they blog their experiences constantly and carry always digital cameras. A technophile, Internet-addicted and comfortable backpacker is increasingly becoming reality. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that backpackers have a high acceptance of using an Internet-enabled mobile phone to plan their route by a digital route planning application. 121 respondents of an online survey determined their attitude towards questions which were based on the technology acceptance model. The findings revealed a rather cautious attitude towards mobile mapping within the backpacker sector at the time of writing this paper. These results are discussed by determined correlations, assessed descriptive statistics, the development of last years, and a division of the pool of respondents into subgroups and their individual means of the answers. The literature based typical backpacker is examined in detail and permits a positive prospect to more acceptance for mobile mapping in the future.

Autorentext

Paulina Gabriele Ziaja graduated in 2009 as Bachelor of Arts in Cruise Industry Management at the Hochschule Bremerhaven (Germany). In 2010, she achieved a Master of Science in Globalisation and Latin American Development at the Institute for the Studies of the Americas, University of London (United Kingdom).