Since the late 1980s, information communication and technology (ICT) have reshaped the landscape of the tourism industry (Buhalis & Law, 2008). Thanks to the Web 2.0 technology, tourism practitioners have never been this close to their customers over social media platforms. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media refers to “a group of Internet-based applications which build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (p. 61). In line with this definition, electronic social networks, user-generated content aggregators, as well as location-based applications are all typical social media platforms, across which enable customers to create, edit, and share content. The increasingly growing social media platforms have greatly facilitated implementations of customer engagement strategies for organizations. As a psychological state, customer engagement is featured by interactive customer experiences with an organization, which encourage psychological, emotional, and physical investment a customer has in the organization (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017). In the tourism and hospitality context, customer engagement strategies are as critical in strengthening customer loyalty, trust, and brand evaluations (So, King, & Sparks, 2016). Useful insights have been gained relating to conceptualization and measurement scale of customer engagement, organizational and cultural obstacles to consumer engagement within hotel organizations (Chathoth et al., 2014), customer engagement in a social media context alongside the process of recognition (Cabiddu et al., 2014). Underlying the practical and theoretical significance of customer engagement lies the subjective nature of views on the social media platforms. Goh, Heng, and Lin (2014) recognized that engagement in social media brand communities positively lead to enhanced purchase expenditures through embedded information and persuasion. Quantitively, the persuasive effect of user generated information is at least 22 times more than that of marketer’s in terms of marginal effect. Although previous research has examined consequences of consumer engagement, there has been less attention paid to its causes. Meanwhile, as far as Brodie et al. (2011) were concerned, the persistency of consumer-brand engagement is contingent on an assessment of tangible and intangible costs against possible benefits such as product news and offers. Therefore, identification of these benefits can offer supplementary insights into current literature of consumer engagement. The current study utilizes the self-determination theory to uncover how engagement in social media activities is facilitated by consumers’ intrinsic motivators and what psychological benefits can consumer obtain from such engagement, as either psychological state or process (Brodie et al., 2011). Research subjects in this study are Chinese social media users. According to eMarketer’s (2017) estimated that more than 80 percent of Internet users in China (i.e., around 626 million people) accessed social networks regularly in 2017. The importance of tapping this massive market can never be overestimated.

This study aims to compare internet portal sites for rural tourism, and to suggest the improved contents for homepage information on mountain villages under the Korea Forest Service. Design, interface, information source, and communication as estimation indicators were used to understand the characteristics of portal sites, and sub-items under indicators to analyse the portal sites were established. Nationwide portal sites were compared for rural tourism information. Also, German and Italian portal sites were compared as overseas cases. As a result, an internet portal site for information on mountain villages under the Korea Forest Service has to be improved as compared with other portal sites related to rural tourism. Firstly, it is necessary to modify and improve the category explaining mountain villages. Secondly, homepage for developing mountain villages has to be established and linked to potential visitors. Thirdly, portal sites for developing mountain villages subsequently have to be constructed under the site of the Korea Forest Service.