Heuristics in digital communication media: theoretical explications and empirical observations

Abstract

This study explicates the process in which heuristics triggered by technological features of digital communication media affect persuasive outcomes and demonstrates the actual operation of a heuristic by validating the “priming plus unrelated tasks” procedure and the moderated mediation analysis strategy proposed by Bellur and Sundar (2014) for measuring heuristics. In a between-subjects experiment \((N = 100)\), the being-here heuristic primed and non-primed participants were assigned a smartphone with either a large or small screen. The results indicate that both manipulations are key to greater self-reported use of the heuristic and affective trust. A follow-up analysis based on the proposed method using the PROCESS macro for SPSS captured the actual operation of the being-there heuristic. This provides statistical evidence of the role that the being-there heuristic plays in explaining why and how a larger screen leads to greater affective trust, thereby demonstrating the validity and applicability of the proposed method.