From “Sacred Spaces” to “Selfie Spots”: how social media sharing motivations transform tourist-destination relationships

The proliferation of social media has led tourists to increasingly prioritize the creation of shareable content, reshaping their interactions with destinations and influencing their sustainable behavior. Drawing on objectification theory, this study employs a multi-method approach combining a recall-based survey with three scenario-based experiments to examine how sharing motivations shape tourists’ perceptions and conduct. The findings reveal that tourists with (vs. without) sharing motivations exhibit higher levels of destination objectification (perceiving destinations primarily as instruments for self-presentation), which in turn reduces their sustainable behavior. Moreover, destination humanized care emerges as a moderator that can mitigate these negative effects. This study highlights a fundamental tension in digital tourism: the motivation to share a destination’s beauty online fosters objectification, ultimately undermining the sustainable behaviors needed to protect destinations. The results enrich the literature on social media sharing, unsustainable tourist behavior, and objectification theory, while offering practical guidance for tourism managers on fostering sustainable conduct in the era of online sharing.