Heuristic Cues Research Articles

Stranger danger? Cue‐based trust in online consumer product review videos

AbstractTrust is a significant factor in electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM) effects. Consumers often need to form judgements about others using heuristic cues when they cannot rely on previous cumulative experiences with an online entity. Drawing on the theoretical construct of cue‐based trust and signalling theory, this study aimed to identify and examine the efficacy of content attributes serving as trust cues in online consumer product review videos. A multi‐method study conducted a series of focus groups and a survey study; focus groups identified 18 content attributes intentionally provided by a content creator in product review videos that serve as trust cues. In the focus groups and the survey, six of these content attributes emerged as heuristic cues that are particularly effective at eliciting consumer trust. Findings contribute to the understanding of cue‐based trust and signalling theory in the eWOM context and hold practical implications for various stakeholders.

Referrals and their effect on Venture Capital Due Diligence

Venture capital is a socially embedded business where VCs refer investment opportunities to one another. While we know that these referrals increase the chances of a start-up passing the initial screening process, we investigate to what extent the intensity of relational embeddedness between referrer and referee relates to the length of the due diligence process of the start-up being referred. Building on social exchange theory, we find that referees do not take the referral as a simple heuristic cue to shortcut the due diligence process, but rather reciprocate the favor by commitment towards the relationship and expending additional time on due diligence. Moreover, we find that the individual investment manager’s current performance and experience moderate this relationship.

Fake news on Facebook: examining the impact of heuristic cues on perceived credibility and sharing intention

PurposeAs the epidemic of online fake news is causing major concerns in contexts such as politics and public health, the current study aimed to elucidate the effect of certain “heuristic cues,” or key contextual features, which may increase belief in the credibility and the subsequent sharing of online fake news.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a 2 (news veracity: real vs fake) × 2 (social endorsements: low Facebook “likes” vs high Facebook “likes”) between-subjects experimental design (N = 239).FindingsThe analysis revealed that a high number of Facebook “likes” accompanying fake news increased the perceived credibility of the material compared to a low number of “likes.” In addition, the mediation results indicated that increased perceptions of news credibility may create a situation in which readers feel that it is necessary to cognitively elaborate on the information present in the news, and this active processing finally leads to sharing.Practical implicationsThe results from this study help explicate what drives increased belief and sharing of fake news and can aid in refining interventions aimed at combating fake news for both communities and organizations.Originality/valueThe current study expands upon existing literature, linking the use of social endorsements to perceived credibility of fake news and information, and sheds light on the causal mechanisms through which people make the decision to share news articles on social media.

The effects of ad heuristic and systematic cues on consumer brand awareness and purchase intention: Investigating the bias effect of heuristic information processing

With growing numbers of digital users, social media advertising becomes a vital marketing channel for attracting and sustaining consumers. Drawing on the heuristic-systematic model, this research investigates the effects of advertisement systematic cues including ad informativeness and ad persuasiveness, and ad heuristic cue which is ad poster category on the consumer brand awareness, and the sequential effect on consumer purchase intention. An experimental design featuring two categories of ad poster, namely, firm and influencer, is created for empirical evidence collection. Results show that ad informativeness and ad persuasiveness contribute to greater consumer brand awareness and purchase intention. The poster category can positively bias the influence of ad informativeness, and firm poster outperforms the influencer poster when controlling the advertisement content the same. The findings demonstrate the co-occurrence of heuristic and systematic information processing in the social media advertising context. This research deepens current understanding of social media advertising and provides practical implications for marketers to capitalize on different ad posters according to advertisement informativeness and persuasiveness feature.

Voters' short-term responsiveness to coalition deals.

Government formation in multiparty systems requires election winners to strike deals to form a coalition government. Do voters respond and how do they respond to coalition government deals? This paper examines the short-term consequences of coalition government formation on voters in European democracies relying on survey panel data and original content analysis of coalition agreements. It tests theoretical expectations that deal with both the actual and perceived ideological shifts parties make when joining coalition deals as well as the effect of a much simpler heuristic cue based on preferences. The findings indicate that coalition deals have consequences on party preferences, but voter perceptions play a much stronger effect than the actual content of coalition deals. These results have important implications for our understanding of public opinion and provide important insights into the current difficulties and challenges of government formation and representative democracy.

Debunking Misinformation About Genetically Modified Food Safety on Social Media: Can Heuristic Cues Mitigate Biased Assimilation?

Focusing on debunking misinformation about genetically modified (GM) food safety in a social media context, this study examines whether source cues and social endorsement cues interact with individuals’ preexisting beliefs about GM food safety in influencing misinformation correction effectiveness. Using an experimental design, this study finds that providing corrective messages can effectively counteract the influence of misinformation, especially when the message is from an expert source and receives high social endorsements. Participants evaluate misinformation and corrective messages in a biased way that confirms their preexisting beliefs about GM food safety. However, their initial misperceptions can be reduced when receiving corrective messages.

Looks Clear and Sounds Familiar: How Consumers Form Inferential Beliefs About Luxury Hotel Service Quality

The purpose of this study is to examine how varying levels of brand familiarity and photographic image quality of hotel pictures influence consumers’ perceptions about luxury hotel services and attitudinal responses and whether their visual aesthetic experience and inferential beliefs about service quality can mediate such effects. This is a 2 (brand familiarity: familiar vs. unfamiliar brand) × 2 (image quality: high vs. low image resolution) factorial design randomized experiment and the proposed model was tested using a structural equation model ( N = 430). The proposed model was confirmed that consumers viewed the visual appearance of a hotel suite room (varying in image quality) and brand name (varying in brand familiarity), experienced processing fluency, drew inferential beliefs (about tangible and intangible service quality), formed attitudes toward the brand, and purchase intentions. The study presents an explanatory framework that delineates how varying hotel-related cues in an online setting can shape consumers’ perceptions and judgments of a luxury hotel brand. To one’s best knowledge, no research has examined the impact of both brand familiarity and photographic image quality of a hotel room. More importantly, this study reveals to what extent consumers’ inferential beliefs about service quality can be influenced by the heuristic cues and provides direct evidence for the mediating role of processing fluency and aesthetic appreciation.

Why Does Explainability Matter in News Analytic Systems? Proposing Explainable Analytic Journalism

ABSTRACT As the use of algorithms has emerged in journalism, analytic/algorithmic journalism (AJ) has seen rapid development in major news organizations. Despite this surging trend, little is known about the role and the effects of explainability on the process by which people perceive and make sense of trust in an algorithm-driven AI system. While AJ has greatly benefited from increasingly sophisticated algorithm technologies, AJ suffers from a lack of transparency and understandability for readers. We identify explainability as a heuristic cue of an algorithm and conceptualizes it in relation to trust by testing how it affects user emotion with AJ. Our experiments show that the addition of interpretable explanations leads to enhanced trust in the context of AJ and readers' trust hinges upon the perceived normative values that are used to assess algorithmic qualities. Explanations of why certain news articles are recommended give users emotional assurance and affirmation. Mediation analyses show that explanatory cues play a mediating role between trust and performance expectancy. The results have implications for the inclusion of explanatory cues in AJ, which help to increase credibility and help users to assess AJ value.

The Information Diversity Effect on Investor Relations: An Experimental Study on Investors’ Evaluation of a Firm

This study investigated how an investor''s evaluation of a firm varies depending on the type of corporate information presented on the firm’s website. Based on previous studies, three factors were assumed to influence this evaluation: (a) the information itself, (b) the information source, and (c) the investor’s involvement. Using an experiment involving 232 participants, the effect of corporate information quality on an investor’s evaluation was assessed. The results revealed that high information diversity significantly improved the investor’s positive evaluation of a firm. In addition, high investor involvement was more likely to induce positive investment belief in the presence of high information diversity. Perceived information credibility was a mediator in the cognitive path between information diversity and investment belief. On the other hand, a low level of investor involvement was more likely to induce positive investment belief in the presence of a high level of heuristic cues for the information source.

Correlates of Enhancing Retweets Among Users: The Case of Nissan

The purpose of this paper is to determine which elements of Twitter stimulate the dissemination of messages in the microblogging community. We collected a database of 1,112 Spanish-speaking users for this study who had mentioned the keyword "Nissan" in their tweets, and performed a multiple regression analysis. We have found that certain characteristics of tweets (longer tweets that express feelings through mentions and lexical diversity) obtain higher dissemination rates compared to those that do not. Hashtags and links seem to distract users from processing the information and do not act as heuristic cues. Users want to find heuristic cues that help them process information easily in social media. However, the use of links or hashtags in tweets does not help with dissemination, as these elements distract users and decrease the limited writing space available. This paper offers insightful options for brands, marketers and professionals on how to maximize the impact of social media at no additional cost.

Noncompliance with Masking as a Coalitional Signal to US Conservatives in a Pandemic.

Humans have evolved perceptual acuity toward environmental cues heuristically associated with communicable disease that elicits an aversion. One heuristic cue that humans utilize to infer contamination threat is ingroup-outgroup status, with prejudices arising toward outgroup members due to potential novel pathogen exposure. The current study sought to investigate how disease responses in the US population have been modulated by the COVID-19 pandemic, given its origins in China, an outgroup population. We predicted that participants expressing heightened perceived vulnerability to disease and greater levels of conservatism would report higher levels of aversion towards targets not wearing a mask, particularly among Asian targets, given the association of COVID-19 with Asian populations. Results indicate that conservative individuals were more comfortable with both Asian and White targets if they were not wearing a mask, particularly male targets. We contextualize these findings by identifying how mask-wearing during the pandemic could be more communicative of one’s coalitional affiliation rather than a protective health measure for more conservative persons.

How online review richness impacts sales: An attribute substitution perspective

AbstractRicher forms of online reviews such as videos or follow‐on reviews convey ‘additional information and can attract consumers’ attention. However, prior studies focused mostly on the relationship between aggregated online reviews and sales. This paper investigates the impact of online review richness (i.e., reviews containing videos or follow‐on reviews) on sales. Leveraging attribute substitution theory, we conjecture that online review richness can provide heuristic cues in the online shopping environment to help consumers make better purchase decisions. Using data from JD.com, we found that reviews containing either videos or follow‐on reviews positively affect sales. In addition, different product types can also serve as heuristic cues to replace target cues, which can further affect how different forms of online review richness affect sales. We found that the impact of online review richness on sales is stronger for utilitarian products than for hedonic products, and stronger for negatively commented products than for positively commented products. Moreover, we conducted two online experiments and confirmed that the causal relationship is from online review richness to sales. The research findings offer practical implications for online retailers and constitute one of the first steps toward a better understanding of the relationship between online review richness and sales.

Heuristic cues as perceptual filters: Factors influencing public support for nuclear research reactor in Singapore

Nuclear energy is an important consideration for decarbonisation. However, for Singapore – a country at the nascent stage of nuclear energy development – the building of a nuclear research reactor could be a precursor to a full-fledged nuclear energy plan. Guided by the cognitive miser model and the knowledge deficit model, this study examines factors shaping public support for the use of a nuclear research reactor for medical purposes. In particular, we seek to understand how different types of knowledge could affect public support for the use of a nuclear research reactor in an island city-state. Based on the data from a nationally representative door-to-door survey of 1000 adult Singaporeans, we found that the public mainly depend on heuristics, such as religiosity, benefit perception, and trust in relevant authorities, to form attitudes towards the use of a nuclear research reactor, revealing a tendency to employ mental shortcuts for decision making. More importantly, we found that heuristics moderated the effect of contextual nuclear knowledge on public support for the use of a nuclear research reactor. This indicates that individuals might interpret the same information differently, depending on their firmly held beliefs or pre-existing perceptions.

Antecedents of Trust and Adoption Intention toward Artificially Intelligent Recommendation Systems in Travel Planning: A Heuristic–Systematic Model

Drawing on the dual process theory, this study investigates the impacts of systematic and heuristic cues on travelers’ cognitive trust, emotional trust, and adoption intention toward artificial intelligence (AI)–based recommendation systems in travel planning. The moderating effect of perceived risk is also examined. Two studies with both scenario-based surveys and lab experiment approaches are conducted. Findings suggest that while travelers utilize both systematic and heuristic cues, effects of systematic cues on adoption as a decision aid is stronger than the effects of heuristic cues. Emotional trust has a stronger impact on intention to adopt as a delegated agent than cognitive trust. Perceived risk moderates the relationships between systematic and heuristic cues, trust, and adoption intentions. When travelers perceive high risk, they rely more on systematic cues through building cognitive trust. However, when the level of perceived risk is low, travelers depend more on heuristic cues through establishing emotional trust.

Does speed of recognition predict two-alternative forced-choice performance? Replicating and extending Starns, Dubé, and Frelinger (2018).

Does the speed of single-item recognition errors predict performance in subsequent two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) trials that include an item with a previous error response? Starns, Dubé, and Frelinger found effects of this kind in two experiments and accounted for them in terms of continuous memory-strength signal guiding recognition decisions. However, the effects of error speed might just as well only reflect an artefact due to an error-correction strategy that uses response latency as a heuristic cue to guide 2AFC responses, elicited through confounding factors in their experimental design such as error-correction instructions and feedback. Using two conditions, a replication condition, replicating the procedure from Starns et al., and an extension condition (each n = 130), controlling for the named shortcomings, we replicated the error speed effect. In both conditions, speed of errors in a single-item recognition task was predictive of subsequent 2AFC performance, including the respective error item. To be more precise, fast errors were associated with decreased 2AFC performance. As there was no interaction with the factor condition, the results support the idea that speed of single-item recognition responses reflects the amount of memory information underlying the respective response rather than being used for a simple error-correction strategy to improve 2AFC performance.

Online bandwagon effects: Quantitative versus qualitative cues in online comments sections

Bandwagon effects explain an individual’s tendency to conform to and follow other people’s opinions. Drawing on bandwagon effects, this study explored the relative influence of two different bandwagon heuristic cues in an online comments section (quantitative vs qualitative) on changes in news readers’ opinion. Study 1 revealed that qualitative cues have a stronger effect than quantitative cues in changing news readers’ opinions. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 and showed that people change opinions in the same direction as perceived public opinion, providing empirical evidence of online bandwagon effects. The findings offer theoretical insights by explicating the process of opinion change via perceived public opinion as well as practical insights into public opinion formation in online environments.

Credibility of preprints: an interdisciplinary survey of researchers.

Preprints increase accessibility and can speed scholarly communication if researchers view them as credible enough to read and use. Preprint services do not provide the heuristic cues of a journal's reputation, selection, and peer-review processes that, regardless of their flaws, are often used as a guide for deciding what to read. We conducted a survey of 3759 researchers across a wide range of disciplines to determine the importance of different cues for assessing the credibility of individual preprints and preprint services. We found that cues related to information about open science content and independent verification of author claims were rated as highly important for judging preprint credibility, and peer views and author information were rated as less important. As of early 2020, very few preprint services display any of the most important cues. By adding such cues, services may be able to help researchers better assess the credibility of preprints, enabling scholars to more confidently use preprints, thereby accelerating scientific communication and discovery.

Understanding the Country Image-Travel Motivation Nexus in Emerging Tourism Typologies for South Africa

Abstract Introduction. This paper explores the influence of country image on the evaluation of a destination’s attributes from the perspective of inbound tourists to South Africa - within the context of both business and medical tourism. Material and methods. Data were generated from a self-administered questionnaire distributed as part of a survey of inbound tourists visiting South Africa’s Table Mountain. Factor analysis and multiple regression were employed to determine the factors and establish their relationship, respectively. Results. The results suggest that South Africa’s image as a country influences tourist’s perception of the country and its destination attributes. More intriguingly, the results show that South Africa’s image is subject to both stereotypes and the country-of-origin effect. Conclusion. The paper concludes that country image is a significant heuristic cue in the appraisal of the destination attributes that motivate inbound tourist travel behaviour. More so, it is aspects such as the ability to manage its affairs, nationally branded exports and the availability of international business-related opportunities that may be most influential to South Africa’s perceived image in tourist decision-making.

유튜브 내의 휴리스틱 단서들이 정보검색 콘텐츠 시청의도에 미치는 영향

본 연구는 유튜브 이용자들이 정보탐색 중 발견하게 되는 유튜브의 IT 기능들이 휴리스틱 단서로써 컨텐츠에 대한 태도 및 시청 의도에 미치는 영향에 대하여 살펴보고자 하였다. 휴리스틱-체계적 모델(Heuristic-Systematic Model: HSM)에 따르면 사람들은 유용한 정보를 빠르게 선택하여 처리해야 하므로 눈에 띄는 단서인 휴리스틱 단서에 의존하는 경향을 보인다. 본 연구에서는 유튜브 내 존재하는 IT 기능들을 기반으로 발현되는 휴리스틱 단서에 집중하였다. 문헌 연구 및 인터뷰를 기반으로, 콘텐츠에 대한 태도에 영향을 미치는 여러 가지 요소 중에서도 유튜브 내 IT 기능을 통해 발현될 수 있는 세 가지 요인인 사회적 지지, 유튜버의 자기표현, 상호작용성을 도출하여, 해당 요인들을 바탕으로 실험을 진행하였다. 유튜브 속 IT 기능들이 활발히 사용되어 사회적 지지, 유튜버의 자기표현, 상호작용성이 높게 인지되는 경우, 해당 콘텐츠에 대한 태도가 호의적으로 형성되어 시청 의도에 긍정적인 영향을 줄 수 있을 것이라 예상하였다. 데이터 분석 결과, 사용자들은 사회적 지지와 유튜버의 자기표현, 상호작용성을 높게 인지할수록 콘텐츠에 대한 태도를 호의적으로 형성하였으며 이는 시청 의도로까지 이어지는 것을 확인하였다. 본 연구는 유튜브 내 수많은 콘텐츠들 속에서 특정 콘텐츠에 대한 시청을 이끌어내기 위해서 유튜브에서 제공하는 어떠한 IT 기능 요소들을 활용해야 하는지 체계적으로 분류하여 그 역할을 검증함에 의의가 있다.

Instagramming Social Presence: A Test of Social Presence Theory and Heuristic Cues on Instagram Sponsored Posts

This study investigates social presence theory, using sponsored posts on Instagram. By testing a 3 (social presence) × 2 (heuristic cues) × 2 (source of sponsorship) mixed factorial experiment ( N = 378), the results showed significant main effects between social presence, heuristic cues, and sponsorship sources on social media outcomes. In sum, higher purchase intention and the intention to click “Like” generated higher social presence, higher “Likes” (heuristic), and official sponsorship sources. Our findings provide empirical evidence on how to effectively deliver sponsored content on Instagram.