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.
Previous studies and hypothesis development
Overview
Some researchers have suggested that tourists assess their expected or experienced satisfaction with destinations through the “characteristics” they possess (Seddighi and Theocharous 2002; Tussyadiah 2006). The researchers argue that tourists “consume” each characteristic (e.g., natural beauty, cultural heritage, and entertainment elements) of the tourism destination. Most studies about tourist behavior were inspired by research about consumer behavior (Lancaster 1966), and other research results in tourism (Wu and Carson 2008; Yang et al. 2009). However, in this assessment model, tourists have very rational and stable preferences towards different types of attractions and destinations, which may contradict reality (e.g., Kahneman and Tversky 1979; Kahneman 2000a).
Studies in behavioral economics revealed that consumers are not only rational as modeled in many other studies, but their preferences also seem to be easily framed and their decisions are reversed under different contexts (Ariely and Zauberman 2000). Interesting findings on behavioral economics, such as affection treadmill (Kahneman 2000b) and hedonic adaptation (Frederick and Loewenstein 1999), provide new perspectives to improve the model for the general assessment of tourists of their experience.