| With the rapid growth of sharing economy,diverse P2P brands has been regarded as to be a disruptive innovation to traditional business models.The rise of shared accommodation platforms represented by Airbnb has posed a huge threat to the traditional hotel industry.Although compared with traditional hotels,shared accommodation is still in the emerging stage of development in the Chinese market,industry and academic research have found that shared accommodation and traditional hotels are two important components of the accommodation industry,and have strong competition relationship.Therefore,the development potential of the shared accommodation industry in the Chinese accommodation market is huge.It is of great significance for the development of shared accommodation in the accommodation industry to explore the unique advantages of the shared accommodation industry and formulate development strategies in a targeted manner.Studies have shown that the advantages of traditional hotel industry lie in standardized facilities,services and a safe accommodation environment;while the unique advantages of shared accommodation lie in the authentic experience of the destination and social interaction.Although the establishment of social interaction scenario occupies the usable area that can be designed as a room to a certain extent,data shows that the establishment of social interaction scenario will greatly increase the overall revenue of the hotel.Therefore,the realization of social interaction scenarios has greatly upgraded the consumption of the accommodation industry.With their unique advantages,many shared accommodations further expand the realization of social interaction scenarios,design a variety of public spaces,and enhance the social atmosphere of public spaces to attract more consumers.Existing studies have found that socializing has become an important motivation for consumers to choose shared accommodation.The public space of shared accommodation provides conditions for consumers to socialize with hosts and other tourists,and provides a comfortable social atmosphere in public spaces which increase consumption and resident experience.The social interaction between host and customer is a typical representative of social interaction in shared accommodation.Host makes consumer feel truly at home and give consumers an authentic experience.This social interaction mode surpasses the relationship between employees and customers in the traditional business mode,and confirms the appeal of social interaction to consumers under the sharing economy system.With the development of Internet technology and the upgrading of people’s consumption habits,diversified platforms and websites have become the main way for consumers to book accommodation.Data shows that 60%of consumers have chosen to book hotels through integrated hotel reservation platforms,and 40%of consumers have chosen to book hotels through official hotel online booking channels.Compared with traditional hotels,the reservation of shared accommodation is more dependent on the presentation and promotion of the platform,and almost all consumers’ shared accommodation reservation behavior is realized through the shared accommodation platform.Therefore,the online experience of the shared accommodation platform is the first impression of consumers on shared accommodation products,which has an important impact on consumers’ consumption decisions.It is of great significance for the development of shared accommodation to discuss how shared accommodation platforms could optimize consumers’ consumption experience on shared accommodation platforms,and how shared accommodation operators could present attractive accommodation products and highlight the unique advantages of shared accommodation.However,although a few studies have mentioned the impact of information presented by shared accommodation platforms on consumer decision-making,existing research has not systematically explored the impact of various cues presented by shared accommodation products on consumer decision-making,few studies have emphasized the role of the prominent social attributes of shared accommodation on consumer decision-making on shared accommodation platforms as well as the internal mechanism.Therefore,based on the tangibility theory,this research divides the clues presented by the shared accommodation platform products into physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues,in order to systematically explore the impact of different cues in the product presentation of shared accommodation platforms on consumer decision-making,and aims to address the following research questions:(1)What tangibility cues should be paid attention to in shared accommodation?(2)Establish a model of the influence of physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues on consumer decision-making,and explore the difference in the quality of presentation of tangibility cues.(3)Explore the internal mechanism of the model.In the second chapter,it summarizes the conceptual categories and related researches of the sharing economy,shared accommodation,social interaction and consumption decision-making,and introduces the theoretical foundation of the research model,namely the theory of tangibility,the theory of social interaction,the theory of social penetration and the environment psychological theory,etc.,and establishes a basic research model.Then,the thesis conducts three empirical studies:the research of the shared accommodation tangibility cues perceived by consumers,the impact of physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues on consumers’ decision to share accommodation,and the internal mechanism of the dual-cue-driven decision-making model of shared accommodation.It discusses the presentation of physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues in shared accommodation,and establishes a comprehensive consumer decision-making model driven by physical and mental tangibility cues.This thesis discusses the influence of physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues on consumer decision-making,identifies the mediating role of different types of social interaction willingness and host trustworthiness perceived by customers of the model,and analyses the moderating effect of consumers’ shared accommodation experience of the model.The research content and research conclusions of the core chapters of the thesis are as follows:(1)The third chapter of the thesis examines the rationality of the presence of shared accommodation environment,host and other factors determined based on the literature review as the tangible clues of shared accommodation,and preliminarily analyzes the correlation between environmental factors,host factors and social factors.It provides data analysis support for adding environment-related variables,host-related variables and social-related variables to the subsequent establishment of shared accommodation decision-making model,and also lays the foundation for the subsequent establishment of shared accommodation consumer decision-making model.This study identifies six key themes of tourists’ perception of shared accommodation through the LDA linear discriminant method,namely environment,social interaction,experience,host,room,and cost-effectiveness.Among them,both social and host themes highlight that tourist pay attention to social-related content in shared accommodation;envrironmental themes relate to the external and internal environment of shared accommodation.Finally,based on the PyLDAvis algorithm,this study explores the relationship between topics and visualizes the correlation between topics,compares the probability distribution of each topic,and analyzes the aggregation effect of topics based on the K-Means unsupervised clustering algorithm as the robustness check.The study finds that environmental themes,social themes and host themes are closely related,there are differences in the probability proportions of each theme.Tourists are most concerned about the environment and social attributes in shared accommodation,followed by the overall experience of shared accommodation and their communication with the host.Through the robustness test of the clustering effect of topics by the K-Means algorithm,the study finds that the text distribution in the six topics is uniform,and the clustering effect of each comment under the subordinate topic is stable.It also finds that there is a correlation between environmental themes,social themes and host themes,laying a foundation for the subsequent establishment of consumer decision-making model in shared accommodation.(2)The fourth chapter discusses the impact of physical and mental cues on consumer decision-making based on the data of real listings on shared accommodation platforms.In order to further refine the influence of the tangibility cues,we classify the physical and mental cues,and tests the tangibility cues through image recognition algorithms.We address two research questions in this chapter,the first is the influence of the presence or absence of physical and mental cues on customer consumption decisions,the second is the quality of the presentation of physical and mental cues on consumer decision-making,we conduct two studies to address the two research questions.This chapter also explores the particularity of the consumption environment of shared accommodation,that is,the important role of consumers’ social interaction willingness,and the influence of social interaction willingness on the relationship between tangibility cues and consumer decision-making.Study 1 explores the influence of the presence or absence of physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues on consumer decision-making.In this study,whether the listing presents photos of public spaces represents the presentation of physical tangibility cues in shared accommodation,and whether the host of the listing presents self-disclosure in headshot photos to represent the presentation of mental tangibility cues in shared accommodation.This study analyzes the public space presentation of each listing,that is,physical tangibility cues;and the self-disclosure of each listing’s host,that is,the influence of mental tangibility cues on consumers’ social interaction willingness and further influence on consumers’ consumption decisions.The study finds that the public space presentation of shared accommodation listings and the host’s self-disclosure have a positive impact on consumers’ social interaction willingness,which will also have a further positive impact on consumers’ consumption decisions.The study also finds that social interaction willingness plays a mediating role in the relationship between the public space presentation of a listing and the host’s self-disclosure on consumption decisions.It plays a complete mediating role in the impact of public space presentation on consumption decisions and a partial mediating role in the influence of host’s self-disclosure on consumer decision-making,indicating that consumers’ responses to mental tangibility cues were less direct than the physical tangibility cues.Study 2 explores the impact of the quality of physical and mental cues on consumption decisions.This study uses the public space atmosphere presented by the listing to represent the quality of the physical and tangibility cues of shared accommodation,and the degree of self-disclosure by the host in the profile photo to represent the quality of the mental tangibility cues of shared accommodation.The study finds that the public space atmosphere of shared accommodation listings and the quality of self-disclosure of hosts have a positive impact on consumers’ social interaction willingness,and also have a further positive impact on consumers’ consumption decisions.The study finds that social interaction willingness plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between the influence of the public space atmosphere of the listing and the host’s selfdisclosure on consumer decision-making.The emergence of consumer goods prompts consumers to make consumption decisions.An interesting finding of this study is that the presence of tangibility cues in shared accommodation has a greater positive impact on consumers’ social intention than the quality of the presentation of tangibility cues on consumers’ social intention.However,in the impact on shared accommodation consumption decisions,the quality of presentation of tangibility cues has a greater positive contribution to consumption decisions.The stimuli presented by tangibility cues will lead to direct consumer response,but the effect of such stimuli will not necessarily continue to affect consumer behavior,while the quality of the presentation of tangible cues of the product have a longer-term impact and will have a deeper impact on the decision-making of consumers’ final behavior.(3)The fifth chapter of this paper probes into the influence mechanism of tangibility cues on consumer decision-making through four experimental studies,and verifies the consumer decision-making model driven by physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues.In this study,consumer decision-making is refined into consumers’willingness to book and willingness to pay on shared accommodation platforms,it explores the impact of tangibility cues on consumers’ different consumption decisions;consumers’ social interaction willingness in share accommodation is refined into social interaction with hosts and social interaction with other tourists,it discusses the mediating role of different types of social intentions in decision-making models.At the same time,this study also explores the mediating role of perceived host trustworthiness between mental tangibility cues and social intentions willingness,and further analyzes the internal impact mechanism of mental tangibility cues and social intentions willingness.Finally,this study validates a comprehensive model of consumers’ consumption decisions driven by physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues,and explores the moderating role of consumers’ experience of shared accommodation in the model.Study 1 explores the impact of physical tangibility cues on consumers’ different types of consumption decisions and the mediating role of different types of social intentions in the model.Through pre-experiment and main experiment analysis,the study finds that physical tangibility cues have a positive effect on consumers’ willingness to book and willingness to pay for shared accommodation.There is a mediating role in the influence of physical tangibility cues on consumers’ willingness to book and the willingness to pay,but the mediating effect is greater in the willingness to book,which indicates that when consumers are stimulated by physical tangible cues in a shared accommodation consumption environment,they will generate the willingness to socialize with the host or other tourists,and further generate the willingness to book the shared accommodation.Study 2 further explores the mediating effect of perceived host trustworthiness in the influence of mental tangibility cues on consumers’ social interaction willingness based on the original model of the influence of mental tangibility cues on consumers’ consumption decisions.The study finds that host trustworthiness perceived by customer has a mediating effect in the influence of mental tangibility cues on customers’ two types of social intentions,and it is a complete mediating effect.An interesting conclusion is that consumers’ trust in hosts stimulated by mental tangibility cues not only triggers consumers’ social interaction willingness to socialize with hosts,but also has a passthrough effect,that is,consumers are also willing to socialize with other tourists in shared accommodation after they perceive the host as trustworthy.Our research also finds that the perceived trustworthiness of the host has a stronger positive effect on consumers’ social interaction willingness with hosts than on their social interaction willingness with other tourists,indicating that the stimulus effect of mental tangible cues on consumers has object consistency and transitivity.Study 2 also finds that consumers’ social interaction willingness with hosts and their social interaction willingness with other tourists have a mediating role in the influence of perceived host trustworthiness on consumers’willingness to book and willingness to pay,and driven by mental tangibility cues,both types of social interaction willingness have a partial mediating role in different consumer decision-making models,and the direct influence of perceived host trustworthiness on consumer decision-making still exists.Study 3 explores the influence of physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues on consumers’ decision-making,establishes a consumer decision-making model driven by physical and mental tangibility cues,and discusses the mediating role of perceived host trustworthiness and different types of social interaction willingness in the model.In this study,we design experiments with physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues that exist at the same time but in different degrees,and forms four experimental scenarios,which analyzes the impact of physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues on consumer willingness to book and willingness to pay for this shared accommodation.This study once again verifies the complete mediating effect of perceived host trustworthiness in the influence of mental tangibility cues on consumers’ social interaction willingness,and finds that physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues have a positive impact on consumers’ consumption decisions,and the mediating role of two types of social interaction willingness in different decision-making models.The results show that under the mediation of consumers’ different types of social intentions,mental tangibility cues have a greater impact on consumers’ willingness to book for shared accommodation,while physical tangibility cues have a greater impact on consumers’ willingness to pay for shared accommodation.At the same time,this study also finds that social interaction willingness has a stronger mediating effect in the influence of dual tangible cues on consumers’willingness to book shared accommodation.The generation of social interaction willingness requires consumers’ psychological processing,and the stimulation of mental tangibility cues could enhance the influence of social interaction willingness on consumers’ consumption decisions.Study 4 explores the moderating effect of consumers’ experience of shared accommodation on the consumer decision-making model driven by physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues.We classify consumers into two categories:those who have shared accommodation experience and those who have not shared accommodation experience.We analyze the moderating effect of consumers’ experience on the dual tangible cue-driven consumption decision-making model proposed in Study 3,and establish a comprehensive model driven by dual tangibility cues,moderated by consumers’shared accommodation experience and mediated by social interaction willingness.In this study,we find that consumers’ experience of shared accommodation has a moderating effect on the model,and it has different moderating directions in the influence of tangibility cues on mediator and outcome variables.In the influence of tangibility cues on consumers’ social interaction willingness,consumers who have not shared accommodation experience will significantly increase their social interaction willingness when they are stimulated by physical tangibility cues and mental tangibility cues.In the impact of tangibility cues on consumers’ consumption decisions,consumers’ shared accommodation experience only modulates the impact of tangible cues on consumers’ willingness to pay for shared accommodation.Consumers who have shared accommodation experience will spend more on shared accommodation when stimulated by tangible cues.In this chapter,through four experimental studies,a comprehensive and complete dual tangible cue-driven consumer decision-making model is finally established,three mediators are verified in the model:perceived host trustworthiness,social interaction willingness with hosts,social interaction willingness with other tourists,and the important role of the moderator:consumers’ experience of sharing accommodation is verified in the model.The sixth chapter of this paper summarizes the conclusions of the research,proposes management suggestions for shared accommodation operators,shared accommodation platforms and other shared consumption platforms.It also concludes the limitations of this research and prospects for future research at the end of the thesis. |
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