The impact of retouched travel photos on social media audiences’ perceptions of authenticity, perceived aesthetics and impulse travel intention

While retouched photos on social media have been argued to be at best inauthentic and at worst fake, this study employs a negotiated authenticity lens in combination with aesthetics theory to investigate how social media audiences perceive the authenticity, including antecedents and consequences, of retouched travel photos, using an online survey. Findings show that in the context of retouched travel photos, perceived constructive authenticity, perceived existential authenticity ascribed by social media audiences, and perceived creative authenticity derived from tourists’ rationale for posting are significantly associated with social media audiences’ perceptions of the authenticity of these photos. This positively associates with perceived aesthetics and in turn, predicts impulse travel intention. Notably, this study demonstrates that social media audiences actively and critically engage in the attribution of authenticity. These findings offer valuable theoretical contributions and provide useful practical implications for tourism providers to plan and design tourism products and marketing collateral.