Full Picture

Article analysis:

The article “Social Influence and Bandwagon Effects in Tourism Travel” is an informative piece that provides evidence on how social influence affects individual decisions to take a vacation trip and the choice of destination. The authors use representative microdata for 28 European countries between 2014 and 2016 involving more than 60,000 individuals to examine whether ‘what others do’ matters for individual choices. The empirical model accounts for potential endogeneity of the social influence effect using a control function approach, which provides a clean estimate of the impact of social influence on travel patters net of habit formation and other sources of heterogeneity in preferences.

The article is generally reliable, as it draws from existing literature on bandwagon effects, provides evidence from real-world data, and uses an appropriate methodology to account for potential endogeneity issues. However, there are some points that could be improved upon in terms of trustworthiness and reliability. For example, while the authors provide evidence from 28 European countries between 2014-2016, they do not provide any information about other regions or time periods outside this scope; thus, it is unclear whether their findings can be generalized beyond Europe during this period. Additionally, while they discuss different causal mechanisms behind interdependent preferences and bandwagon effects (e.g., conspicuous consumption), they do not provide any evidence to support these claims or explore counterarguments; thus, it would be beneficial if they provided further evidence or discussed alternative explanations for their findings. Finally, while they discuss sociodemographic characteristics as part of their analysis, they do not provide any information about how these factors may interact with social influence; thus, it would be useful if they explored this issue further in future research.