As with other businesses, tourist companies are taking advantage of modern technologies. Chatbots are a recent technology that hotels, travel agencies, and airline companies are adopting. Despite this industry-wide implementation, there is no evidence about the factors that explain why consumers are willing to interact with chatbots. This work proposes a model to explain chatbot usage intention. The model and its hypotheses were tested by structural equations with the PLS technique. The study was conducted on a sample of 476 individuals who had travelled on vacation in the previous 12 months. The study reveals that the intentions behind using chatbots are directly influenced by the following factors: the chatbots’ expected performance, the habit of using chatbots, the hedonic component in using them, the predisposition to using self-service technologies, the social influences, and the fact that the chatbot behaves like a human. The inconvenience and problems related to communicating with the chatbot were found to have a negative influence. Lastly, the possibility that chatbots could replace jobs had a surprisingly positive influence, and not a negative one.

The interest in promoting social entrepreneurship projects lies in their ability to develop innovative solutions to social and environmental problems. This ability becomes even more important in situations of global crises such as that arising from COVID-19. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), an explanatory structural model of social entrepreneurial intention was tested, and the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on this intention was evaluated. To do this, a quantitative investigation was conducted using a survey of Spanish university students, obtaining a total of 558 responses: 324 before the COVID-19 crisis and 234 during the crisis period (February and June 2020). The results obtained make it possible to validate the explanatory model of social entrepreneurial intention from the perspective of the TPB. In addition, it shows that social entrepreneurial intention decreases in times of deep socioeconomic crises and high uncertainty, such as that caused by COVID-19.

Recently, the sharing economy has made a disruptive incursion into the tourism industry. Companies like Airbnb or Wimdu have successfully developed platforms that grant access to accommodation in private homes. However, it seems that conflicts with locals have arisen in different destinations. This study provides an explanatory model to show how the perception of the impacts of the activity influences residents’ attitudes and support. The model was examined using a sample of 1,088 residents in Tenerife (Spain). Results confirm that resident support is directly and positively affected by their perception of the social and cultural impacts, and especially by the economic impacts. It has not been possible to prove the influence of their perception of environmental impacts. Evidence has been gained that perceptions strongly depend on whether locals benefit personally from the activity, and to a lesser extent on their attitude toward the sharing economy and on the state of the local economy.