The Effect Of Picture Visual Information On Consumer Behaviour On Online Accommodation Platforms

Online accommodation platforms,including traditional hotel platform and emerging accommodation sharing platform,are the trading platforms of accommodation products.The data on the online accommodation platform can be divided into structured data like digital rating and price,as well as unstructured data like text and pictures.Previous scholars have conducted a lot of research on the impact of structured data and text of unstructured data on consumer behaviour.However,little work has been done on the impact of picture visual information.This paper employed the deep learning image recognition models to mine the visual information of three different types of pictures in the online accommodation platform,such as review pictures,consumer profile images and host profile images.Moreover,econometric models were constructed to explore the effect of different picture visual information on consumer behaviour.Following is our research in detail:(1)This paper studied the effect of review picture visual information on review helpfulness.Concerning the review pictures of Qunar,the object detection model was employed to extract the visual information of various objects in the review pictures,and econometric models were constructed.The results show the visual information related to core function of hotel,guest rooms and food & beverage,are positively correlated with the review helpfulness,and the hotel price and review rating have negative moderating effects on the relationship between the visual information and the review helpfulness.According to the results,we give some adivice about how platforms and hotel managers deal with reviews with pictures.(2)This paper studied the relationship between the picture visual information of consumer profile image and their sharing intention.Concerning the profile image of consumers in the accommadation sharing platform,the object detection model and facial expression classification model were used to extract the visual information of profile image.Econometric models were constructed.The results show that consumers tend to write longer review text if he or she uploaded profile images,have people in profile images and facial expression of profile image is "happy".According to the results,we give some adivice on how platforms can identify potential consumers with strong sharing intention and host to deal with such consumers.(3)This paper studied the effect of profile image hiding policy on consumer’s booking success rate.Hosts show preference of consumers on accommodation sharing platform and they selectively cancel reservation,taking the quasi natural experiment of the implementation of the platform’s profile image hiding policy,the image recognition model was used to extract visual information in consumers’ profile images,econometric models were constructed.Results show after the policy,the booking success rate of ethnic minorities has been greatly improved,and hosts’ preference behavior to consumer profile images has been corrected to some extent,which proves the effect of the policy.We give some adivice to policy maker in the accommodation sharing platform.(4)This paper studied the trusted effect of host’s profile image picture visual information on consumers.Concerning the host’s profile image in the accommodation sharing platforms,the facial expression recognition model was used to extract the visual information,which was the proxy variable of trust.Econometric models were built.Results show that the host’s "happy" facial expression in profile image can be perceived as trust signal by consumers.Moreover,the real name authentication of hosts and the sharing degree of property can strengthen the trust effect of host’s “happy” expression.We give some suggestions to hosts in accommodation platforms about how to select profile image to convey trust to consumers.To sum up,this paper studied the characteristics of different picture visual information of online accommodation platform and explored the effects of these visual information on consumer’s behaviour.This paper enriches the related literature on the review helpfulness,consumers’ sharing intention,picture policy in accommodation platforms and trust mechanism in accommodation sharing.The research method conbining visual information mining and econometric models can bring some enlightenment to the following related research.