Travel live-streaming empowerment amid crises: a processual and psychological view

The recent pandemic has restricted global mobility, thus necessitating new technology to be used to enable new forms of travel, e.g. travel live-streaming (TLS). While the prosperity of TLS has fuelled tourism industry economically, little is known about how it can psychologically empower its participants during crises. This research thus, from a processual view, explores the psychological empowerment stages enabled by TLS. By using a netnography approach, audio data derived from 28 travel live streams were collected over two years (2020–2022). Based on the empowerment theory, the findings propose a psychological empowerment process framework and reveal three processive stages of intrapersonal (initialization), interpersonal (participation, influence and control) and relational (interdependence) to develop such empowerment among TLS stakeholders. This study thus contributes to the psychological empowerment theory by identifying its progressive construct and emphasizing the unique role of relational stage, enabled by TLS. It also provides novel insights for TLS stakeholders to seek coping strategies in a powerless situation.