Analysis method and notations
In this study, the contrast bias was confirmed by comparing the satisfaction levels of two attractions that were successively visited. The following two distinctions of successive attractions were considered in the data analysis. However, the attractions at the beginning of visiting sequences were not considered in this analysis because they had no previous attractions.
During the pre-experiment examination, we explored the original preference of the participants and their ratings about the tourism destinations they visited in the formal test. We calculated the semantic distance of the virtual destinations based on their ratings on each characteristic, and grouped them based on their proximity to one another.
Based on the distance between a pair of destinations, we defined Everest-lake, beach-waterfall as the same type of destination/attraction; and shop-Everest, shop-lake, waterfall-gallery, park-gallery, and beach-gallery as different types of destinations/attractions. In the experiments, if the two destinations/attractions that the participants successively visited were of the same type, the rating of the latter was marked as “low contrast of type”. If the successfully visited destinations/ attractions were different, the latter rating was marked as “high contrast of type”. We also defined those 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 previously 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”.