Drivers of social media marketing effectiveness in tourism and hospitality organizations

Social media marketing is increasingly recognized as a strategic tool for tourism and hospitality organizations; however, empirical evidence on the factors that influence its effectiveness in emerging tourism destinations such as Ethiopia remains limited. This study develops and empirically tests an integrated framework that examines how trust, perceived risk, content quality, and hedonic motivation affect perceived social media marketing effectiveness (SMME) within Ethiopian tourism and hospitality organizations. A quantitative explanatory research design was used, drawing on data from 335 knowledgeable organizational informants representing tourism and hospitality organizations across major destinations and institutional settings in Ethiopia. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to evaluate the measurement model and test the hypothesized direct and indirect relationships. The results show that trust, content quality, and hedonic motivation have significant positive effects on perceived SMME, while perceived risk has a significant negative effect. Hedonic motivation is the strongest predictor, followed by content quality, underscoring the importance of enjoyable, emotionally engaging, authentic, and informative social media content. Mediation analysis shows that content quality enhances perceived SMME through trust, whereas perceived risk diminishes perceived SMME through trust. The proposed model explains 68.4% of the variance in perceived SMME. This study advances technology-acceptance research by shifting the focus from social media adoption to marketing effectiveness and by integrating cognitive, informational, and affective mechanisms within a unified framework.