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From Online Community to Offline Travel Companions: Technology-Mediated Trust Building and Ad Hoc Travel Group Decision Making

This article explores how cycling tourists build trust in the process of transition from online community to offline travel companions. It uses data collected from participant observation and interviews of a cycling tourist group in China. The findings indicate that after building a social circle in an online community, the members of the “community” build trust by: identifying travel companions’ attitudes, values, knowledge, and experiences to build dispositional trust; identifying companions’ preferences, activities, or the patterns of cycling behavior to build institutional trust; identifying companions’ cycling experiences, occupations, and hobbies to build interpersonal trust. After the identification of travel companions and trust has developed, online community members make the decision to travel together as companions and their online social circle becomes a regulated group without hierarchy. A “triple-jump” explanatory model to explain the trust-building process and practical recommendations from these insights were outlined.