Government short-form video perceptions and rural tourism engagement intentions: destination image and institutional credibility

Government short-form videos combine destination promotion with expectations of reliable public information. This study examines associations among perceived video content attributes, destination image, institutional source credibility, perceived comment support and travel-related engagement intentions in a rural tourism setting in China. All inferential analyses use a de-identified dataset of 612 questionnaire records. Five respondent-level composite measures were examined using a correlated-factor measurement diagnostic, ordinary least squares regression with HC3 heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors, bootstrap estimation and sensitivity analyses. Perceived content attributes were positively associated with destination image (standardised coefficient = 0.509). Destination image was positively associated with engagement intentions after adjustment for content attributes (0.373), with a cross-sectional indirect association of 0.190 (95% bootstrap CI 0.145-0.240). Institutional source credibility positively moderated the content-image association (B = 0.117, p < .001). The image-by-comment-support interaction was not statistically distinguishable from zero at the .05 level (B = 0.057, p = .065). Current engagement intentions were associated with retrospectively reported rural-trip frequency, but the temporal ordering does not support a behavioural-conversion interpretation. The findings therefore support a bounded survey-level account in which perceived institutional credibility conditions the association between content evaluations and destination image, while the proposed moderation by perceived comment support remains uncertain.