Flow of experiment
Pre-experiment session
We obtained 16 screenshots of 16 different tourism destinations/attractions in the VE. The participants were instructed to look at the printed pictures together, and rate them based on the three dimensions of their satisfaction, namely, cultural, natural and entertainment. The participants were then asked to answer their overall subjective assessment of the place. The ratings were all made on a 7-point Likert scale, with scores ranging from 1 (least satisfied) to 7 (most satisfied).
The screenshot of the destinations/attractions that has been used for three formal experiment sessions were also included in the 16 pictures (Additional file 1) to achieve the following:
1). Obtain the tourist original satisfaction assessment
2). Analyze the type and quality of the destinations/attractions to determine whether visiting one after another would be under a high contrast of type frame or a positive/negative contrast of quality frame
3). Compare them with the actual satisfaction assessment under a different frame and bias in the formal session
Data were processed in SPSS by cluster analysis. The semantic distance between each two of the 16 destinations/attractions was calculated based on their average score on the three dimensions (natural, cultural, and entertainment). Next, we defined the destination pairs as “high contrast of type” or “low contrast of type” when the semantic distances between them were significantly large or low, respectively. The average ratings of the assessment of tourists of destinations were also calculated. We defined the destination pairs with significantly different ratings as “high contrast of quality” and others as “low contrast of quality”. In addition, if the better destination was visited before the worse one, the rating of the latter was marked as “negative contrast of quality”. If the better destination was visited after the worse one, the former was marked as “positive contrast of quality”.