From Views to Potential Behaviours: The Role of Travel Vlogs and Digital Nudging in Croatian Coastal Tourism

Abstract

This study investigates how travel vloggers potentially influence tourist behaviour through digital nudging, focusing on four Croatian coastal cities: Dubrovnik, Split, Zadar, and Šibenik. Using qualitative thematic analysis of a purposive sample of English-language YouTube travel vlogs, the research addresses three questions: (1) the types of problems vloggers encounter at the destination, (2) the advice they offer and how it may function as digital nudging, and (3) their motivations for content creation. Findings show that vloggers frequently report issues such as overcrowding, noise, and high prices, often framing these as experiential warnings. Their advice, ranging from strategies to avoid crowds to promoting cultural awareness, could function as informal behavioural guidance. Identified nudging techniques include simplification, framing, priming, loss aversion, and the messenger effect. Vloggers are motivated by audience growth and channel promotion, financial incentives, and informative intent. The study contributes to the growing field of digital nudging by highlighting the potential role of vloggers as informal behavioural influencers in tourism. It bridges behavioural science, tourism studies, and digital media research, showing how peer-generated content on digital platforms could subtly shape tourist behaviour. Practically, the findings suggest that collaboration with vloggers could offer destination management organizations (DMOs) and tourism professionals a scalable, cost-effective method to promote sustainable and culturally sensitive travel behaviours. By embedding incentives in authentic, understandable content, destinations may indirectly address challenges such as overtourism and environmental degradation.

Keywords: digital nudging, tourism, social media vlogs, tourist behaviour