Study on the Mechanism of Social Media Impact on Sri Lankan University Students’ Participation in Heritage Tourism: A Case Study of the University of Sabaragamuwa

Heritage tourism is central to Sri Lanka’s cultural identity and tourism economy, yet university students, despite being frequent, engaged social media users who generally express favorable attitudes toward heritage destinations such as Sigiriya, Anuradhapura, and Kandy, continue to visit these sites infrequently. This study examines the mechanism through which social media exposure is associated with heritage tourism participation among undergraduate students at the University of Sabaragamuwa, Sri Lanka, testing visual inspiration and peer validation as parallel mediating pathways within a cross-sectional case-study design. A structured questionnaire covering social media use, heritage perceptions, and visitation behavior was distributed to 150 students; 126 were returned and 104 valid responses were retained (a 69.3% valid-response rate based on questionnaires distributed and an 82.5% usable-response rate based on questionnaires returned), analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, chi-square testing, multiple linear regression, and bootstrap-based mediation analysis (5000 resamples). Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok were the platforms through which students most often encountered travel-related content. Although students generally perceived heritage sites positively, actual visitation remained low, with 80% of respondents visiting rarely or never. Daily social media time showed a weak negative association with visit frequency (r = −0.19, p = 0.049), while exposure to heritage-related content, peer influence, and Social Sciences faculty affiliation were positively associated with visitation frequency in a regression model explaining 33% of the variance (R² = 0.33, p < 0.001). Mediation analysis indicated that this association operated almost entirely through two indirect pathways, visual inspiration and peer validation, with the direct path becoming statistically non-significant once the mediators were included, consistent with full mediation. Because the data are cross-sectional, these relationships should be interpreted as associative rather than causal; effective heritage tourism promotion should prioritize visually engaging, credible, peer-endorsed content while addressing practical barriers such as cost, time, and transport accessibility.