Introduction
Tourist satisfaction is one of the most important indicators of the future intention of tourists to visit (Osti et al. 2012). Tourism providers can improve their services by studying tourist satisfaction, especially their evaluation processes and preferences. In many studies about tourist satisfaction, the behavior model of satisfaction assessment is derived from studies about the consumers of general commercial products (e.g., Seddighi and Theocharous 2002; Tussyadiah 2006), rather than services that involve abundant physiological fluctuation and complex experience. Text-based questionnaires without further emotional interaction are commonly used to collect data for analyzing the assessment of tourists of their experience. However, human preferences are not constant and their assessment for satisfaction might not have a very rational or standardized basis as suggested in several studies about psychology and behavioral economics (Ariely and Zauberman 2000; Kahneman 2000a). Thus, tourist satisfaction with their expected or actual experience at each tourism attraction can be influenced largely by different sequences of visiting.
Contrast bias describes the inclination to overrate or underrate a subject compared with another (Herr et al. 1983). The present study adopts these concepts to refer to assessment biases with regard to tourist satisfaction. The contrast bias is exhibited when the sequence of visiting tourist attractions is changed in different contexts (e.g., the types of attraction and perceived quality of the service). In other words, previous travel experiences of tourists affect their assessment of the satisfaction of their next travel experiences.
Our study intends to explore the contrast bias on tourist satisfaction by participatory simulation in virtual environments (VEs). By combining experiments with the participation of real people and artificial tourism scenarios, we examine the theories beyond the simulation settings, thereby deepening our understanding of the assessment of tourists of their experience.