Do Visual Perspectives Matter? The “Matching” Between Visual Perspectives and Psychological Distance Improves Hotel Evaluations

Abstract

The present research explores the interplay of visual perspectives and psychological distance in consumer hotel evaluation. Across three studies, the results indicated that if consumers perceive a hotel to be psychologically distal, they process the hotel information more fluently and consequently evaluate the hotel more favorably when exterior pictures are provided than when interior pictures are available. On the contrary, if consumers perceive a hotel to be psychologically proximal, this effect would be reversed. The effect is driven by a “matching” between consumers’ psychological distance from the hotel (i.e., proximal vs. distant) and the types of information available (i.e., interior vs. exterior pictures) that generates a high level of processing fluency. Our findings provide actionable suggestions for hotel marketing professionals concerning how to display a hotel product with different pictures depending on its specific distance attributes.

Keywords

visual perspective psychological distance processing fluency hotel evaluation

Introductions

As an old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. According to a recent study of hotels and accommodations in the 25 most reviewed cities on Tripadvisor, including at least one picture on the property pages can increase traveler engagement by 138% and the likelihood of a booking inquiry by 225% (Gonzalo, 2014). This is so because a hotel’s pictorial information plays a significant role in creating travelers’ first impression and helping them set a more accurate expectation about the check-in hotel, and facilitating their booking decisions (Baek & Ok, 2017; Jeong & Choi, 2005; Kurbatskaya et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2019). However, there is also a downside to too many pictures; it might be overwhelming for travelers to thoroughly process the information, resulting in cognitive overload and decision difficulty (Gao et al., 2012; Y. Jia et al., 2021; Malhotra, 1984). Echoing this, some hotel marketing professionals are suggested to provide approximately seven pictures in practice to avoid overwhelming consumers (GuruHotel, 2020). Therefore, while pictorial information is generally preferred when making a hotel booking decision when travelers are faced with an extremely large number of pictures, it can backfire by making the decision process more difficult. This dilemma therefore gives way to a much more fundamental question: what types of pictures should be selectively provided given that travelers’ capability to process pictorial information is limited?

In general, there are two types of hotel pictures from visual perspectives: interior and exterior pictures (Jiang et al., 2014; Kirima et al., 2017; B. Pan et al., 2013). Interior pictures depict the indoor settings and facilities of a hotel, such as the guestroom or the bathroom, and exterior pictures feature the exterior landscaping and view of a hotel from a passersby’s perspective, such as the hotel’s appearance and surroundings. However, it remains unclear about the relative importance of these two types of hotel pictures in hotel industry. While some stress the importance of interior design and believe that the interior design ultimately determines consumers’ perceptions of comfort and safety (Ana, 2016), others highlight the significance of the exterior part of a hotel, arguing that a well-designed exterior can increase a hotel’s turnover rate up to 50% (LinkedIn, 2022). As a result of these seemingly divergent opinions, hotel marketing professionals attempt to increase the number of both interior and exterior pictures being displayed, hoping to maximize the benefits of pictorial information (Bufquin et al., 2020; Ma et al., 2018; Phelan et al., 2011), which makes the dilemma mentioned previously even more pronounced.

Prior research has suggested that a picture’s visual perspective can impact consumers’ information processing and subsequently their evaluation of a focal object (Kraft, 1987; Mandell & Shaw, 1973; Meyers-Levy & Peracchio, 1992). For example, one study shows that shifting one’s perspective from the “outside a room” to “inside the room” would lead to a shift in processing style, and increase the difficulty in evaluating a hotel product (Jiang et al., 2014). However, the research that focuses on the shift of visual perspectives has not yet investigated the different impacts of exterior versus interior visual perspectives on consumers’ evaluations of a hotel and examined when one perspective is more effective than the other in improving hotel evaluation.

Drawing upon construal level theory, we propose that interior and exterior pictures might interplay with the psychological distance of a hotel to impact consumers’ hotel evaluations. Psychological distance refers to people’s perception of where and when an object occurs based on their current state as a reference point (Liberman & Trope, 2008, 2014; Trope & Liberman, 2003). In the domain of hotel products, for example, psychological distance (vs. proximity) refers to a hotel that is located far away from (vs. close to) a consumer, or a hotel that a consumer will visit after a long (vs. short) time. According to construal level theory, a consumer tends to process the information of a distal hotel at higher levels of construal (i.e., focusing on the global, gist, and summary of the hotel) but to process that of a proximal hotel at lower levels of construal (i.e., focusing on the contextual, readily observable features) (Ho et al., 2015; Rim et al., 2009). As exterior pictures mainly depict the global view of a hotel and interior pictures mainly depict the concrete and detailed features, we propose that consumers will find it more fluent to process the exterior pictorial information if the target hotel is distant away from consumers, but find it more fluent to process the interior pictorial information if the target hotel is proximal to consumers. The higher level of processing fluency generated by the fit between visual perspectives and psychological distance subsequently transforms into a more positive evaluation of the hotel being evaluated (Amit et al., 2009; Thompson & Hamilton, 2006).

This research contributes to prior research in several important perspectives. First, while no consensus has been reached in terms of which type of pictorial information is more effective in improving consumers’ evaluation of a hotel, this research considers the interplay between visual perspectives and psychological distance of a hotel and suggests that providing exterior pictures would have a positive impact on consumers’ preference for a psychological distal hotel but providing interior pictures would have a positive impact on consumers’ preference for a proximal hotel. Second, the present research extends prior research on construal level theory. Specifically, our work suggests that exterior versus interior pictures serve as another manifestation of high-level versus low-level construal, which adds to the growing literature examining factors that lead people to construe an object at the high level versus low level (Aggarwal & Zhao, 2015; Amit et al., 2009; IJzerman & Semin, 2010; H. Lee et al., 2017). Third, the present research adds to hotel marketing by taking psychological distance into consideration. Specifically, either location or visit time serves as the important attributes of a hotel product. Surprisingly, to our knowledge prior research has seldom considered distinguishing hotel products based on these attributes and investigates which types of pictorial information should be provided depending on these distinctions. The present research shows that the psychological distance of a hotel product can influence consumers’ judgments as a result of the metaphorical match between this distance and the types of pictures provided. Finally, the present research provides actionable implications for hotel marketing professionals concerning how to use different types of pictures to improve hotel evaluation depending on the hotel’s distance attributes.

Theoretical Background and Hypotheses

Construal Level Theory of Psychological Distance

Psychological distance is a central concept of construal level theory, it is a subjective experience that an object is close to or far away from here, and now (Bar-Anan et al., 2006; Trope et al., 2007; Trope & Liberman, 2010). In the domain of hotel products, if a hotel is located in a distant destination away from consumers, or if consumers will visit the hotel after a long time, consumers will perceive the hotel to be a psychologically distant one. By contrast, if the hotel is located in a proximal destination, or if consumers visit the hotel after a short time, they will perceive the hotel to be a psychologically proximal one.

The basic premise of construal level theory is that psychological distance is linked to the level of mental construal (Trope & Liberman, 2010), and people use different levels of abstraction to mentally represent or construe the object with different psychological distance (Zheng et al., 2020). Specifically, a psychologically distant object will be construed at a high level, and people tend to focus on the relatively abstract, stable, and global gist of this object. By contrast, a psychological proximal object will be construed at a low level, and people tend to pay attention to the concrete, contextualized, and local features of the same object (Liberman & Förster, 2009; Liberman & Trope, 2008, 2014; Trope et al., 2007; Trope & Liberman, 2003, 2012). For instance, people are more sensitive to and focus more on a product’s style, design, and shape at a high level of construal, but tend to be concerned more about the product’s individual touches, colors, and nuts-and-bolts details at a low level (J. S. Jia et al., 2014; H. Lee et al., 2014).

Visual Perspectives

According to construal level theory, we argue that exterior pictures depict the relatively stable and global features of a hotel, and interior pictures depict the contextualized and local features of a hotel. Below, we will elaborate on why this is so from these two perspectives.

First, a hotel’s exterior landscaping is relatively more stable and less changeable than its interior design. From the perspective of the hotel renovation, it is difficult to refurbish or retrofit the outside appearance of a hotel, or to change the surrounding environment of the hotel (e.g., landscaping or other adjacent buildings) due to financial or time cost (Ekanayake et al., 2018; Ismail & Rogerson, 2016). However, a hotel’s interior design can be changed as a function of decorations, light design, and furniture rearrangement (Millar & Baloglu, 2011; Siamionava et al., 2018; Wu & Liang, 2009). Hotel industry statistics also show that hotels on average remodel their interior decorations every 3 to 5 years (Rockfon, 2022), but renovate exteriors every 25 to 50 years or more (AssetsAmerica, 2020). Consequently, consumers tend to perceive a hotel’s exteriors to be more stable than its interior settings.

In addition, relative to interior pictures, a hotel’s exterior pictures usually capture a more global view of the hotel, such as the landscaping around the hotel rather than the hotel itself (Han et al., 2019; Ren et al., 2021). For instance, from the exterior pictures that depict a hotel standing on a street lined with shops and bustling crowds, people can infer that the hotel might be located in a business center rather than a mountain resort. Interior pictures, by contrast, focus on the inside of the hotel and portray the details related to the hotel itself (Luo et al., 2021; Stringam & Gerdes, 2010). Thus, we suggested that compared to interior pictures exterior pictures depict the more global features of a hotel.

Taken together, we propose that exterior pictures depict the relatively stable and global features of a hotel and interior pictures depict the contextualized and local features of a hotel. To provide some direct evidence for this proposition, we did a pretest consisting of 119 participants from Credamo (an Mturk-like online survey panel in China). In the pretest, participants were randomly assigned to see three exterior pictures or three interior pictures of the same hotel and then were asked to indicate to what extent the hotel feels like never changed and to what extent the pictures depict a global view of the hotel from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). The results showed that participants did perceive exterior pictures to depict more stable features: M_exterior = 5.52, SD = 1.13 versus M_interior = 4.95, SD = 1.11, F (1, 117) = 7.69, p < .01, partial η² = .062, and more global views of the hotel, M_exterior = 6.18, SD = .62 versus M_interior = 4.75, SD = 1.49, F (1, 117) = 47.27, p < .001, partial η² = .288 than interior pictures. For details of the study, see Appendix A.

The Interaction Effect of Visual Perspective and Psychological Distance

Previous research has suggested that external stimuli are evaluated more favorably if they fit people’s mental representational state (Higgins, 2000; Huang et al., 2017; A. Y. Lee & Aaker, 2004; A. Y. Lee et al., 2010; Thompson & Hamilton, 2006; Zhao & Xie, 2011). For example, the message framed in gain is more persuasive to consumers with a promotion regulatory focus, whereas that framed in loss is more persuasive to consumers with a prevention focus (Cai & Leung, 2020; A. Y. Lee & Aaker, 2004). Likewise, consumers evaluate a brand extension that provides a close fit to the parent brand more favorably when they perceive themselves to be close to the extension, whereas evaluate a brand extension that provides a poor fit to the parent brand more favorably when they perceive themselves to be distant to it (Huang et al., 2017; Kim & John, 2008). Drawing from the research on construal level theory (Trope et al., 2007; Trope & Liberman, 2012), consumers’ evaluations of others’ consumption recommendations are more favorable when there is a match between their closeness to the recommender and the temporal distance at which this consumption would occur than when there is not (Zhao & Xie, 2011).

To sum up, prior research provides robust evidence that when there is a consistency between consumers’ current mental representational state and the product information they encounter, they are likely to perceive fluency in processing the information, and these positive feelings can improve consumers’ product evaluation (Hou & Zhang, 2021; Kim et al., 2009; Labroo & Lee, 2006; A. Y. Lee & Aaker, 2004; A. Y. Lee et al., 2010). In the present paradigm, we therefore argue to the extent that exterior pictures depict the high-level features of a hotel and interior pictures depict the low-level features of a hotel, consumers’ psychological distance from the hotel and their levels of construal subsequently activated should influence how fluently they could process the information for hotel evaluations and judgments. Specifically, a psychologically distal hotel should activate consumers’ high-level construal, which subsequently facilitates their processing of high-level features depicted by exterior pictures, and thus providing exterior pictures increases their perceived processing fluency. Consequently, consumers misattribute the feeling of processing fluency to the evaluated hotel, resulting in an improved hotel evaluation (Reber et al., 1998; Storme et al., 2015; Wadhwa & Zhang, 2015; Yan, 2016). By contrast, a psychologically proximal hotel would activate the low-level construal that facilitates the processing of low-level features depicted by the interior pictures. Consequently, providing interior pictures would render a more favorable evaluation of the hotel than providing exterior ones. Formally, a matching effect is proposed:

H1a: When consumers perceive themselves to be psychologically distal from a hotel, they will evaluate the hotel more favorably if exterior pictures are presented than if interior pictures are presented.

H1b: When consumers perceive themselves to be psychologically proximal to a hotel, they will evaluate the hotel more favorably if interior pictures are presented than if exterior pictures are presented.

H2: Consumers’ perceived fluency of information processing mediates the interaction effect of visual perspective and psychological distance on the hotel evaluation.

We summarize and illustrate our theoretical framework in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

The Conceptual Framework.

In the present research, we test these hypotheses through four studies (including a pilot study reported in Appendix B). Using two different ways to manipulate psychological distance (i.e., physical distance in Experiment 1 and temporal distance in Experiments 2–3), and two different ways to manipulate visual perspectives (i.e., the proportion of exterior pictures¹ in Experiments 1–2, and mere exterior pictures versus mere interior pictures in Experiment 3), the three studies validate our basic premise that the “matching” between visual perspectives and psychological distance renders a feeling of processing fluency, which then improves hotel evaluations. The final Experiment 3 identifies a boundary condition of the “matching” effect and meanwhile provides further evidence for the underlying mechanism of processing fluency via a moderation approach. Specifically, the results show that the “matching” effect is attenuated when participants’ feelings of processing fluency are suppressed by presenting the hotel information in a difficult-to-read color contrast (Min, 2022; Novemsky et al., 2007).

Experiment 1

As mentioned above, Experiment 1 aimed to examine whether the large (vs. small) number of exterior hotel pictures would enhance participants’ evaluation of a distant hotel, but would reduce their evaluation of a nearby hotel.

Method

Three hundred twelve Chinese participants (56.09% females; M_age = 26 years) were recruited from an online survey panel Sojump (http://www.sojump.com) for a small monetary reward. Sojump is a professional online survey, evaluation, and voting platform in China with over 2.6 million registered users (Chen & Chen, 2020; Zhou et al., 2013). It has been widely used for data collection in various domains of research, such as social psychology, marketing, and tourism (L. Pan et al., 2021; Yao et al., 2019; Ye et al., 2019; Zhou et al., 2013). Participants were randomly assigned to cells of a 2 (physical distance: distal vs. proximal) × 2 (visual perspectives: high vs. low proportion of exterior pictures) between-subjects design.

Participants were asked to evaluate a resort hotel after viewing its advertisement. Following a procedure used in prior research (Fujita et al., 2006; Henderson et al., 2006; L. Jia et al., 2009), we manipulated physical distance by describing the hotel as the one located either in Miami, a city outside China (in the distal condition) or in Sanya, a city within China (in the proximal condition). Participants were then exposed to a fictitious hotel advertisement containing nine pictures. While three exterior pictures along with six interior pictures of the hotel were shown in the advertisement in the high proportion condition, one exterior picture along with eight interior pictures of the same hotel was shown in the low proportion condition.² It was worth noting that all pictures regardless of visual perspectives were equally attractive according to the results of a pretest (N = 337; F < 1) to ensure everything else being constant across conditions. Please see Appendix C for experimental stimuli in this and the remaining studies.

After viewing the advertisement, participants reported their evaluation of the hotel by responding to three items adapted from Posavac et al. (2004), including (a) how attractive does this hotel seem to you? (1 = not at all; 7 = very much); (b) how do you evaluate this hotel? (1 = very bad; 7 = very good); (c) to what extent are you willing to pay for this hotel (1 = not at all; 7 = very much). These three items were averaged to yield an indicator of hotel evaluation (α = .77). After that, participants reported to what extent they formed the feeling of fluency when reading the hotel advertisement on two items adapted from Shen et al. (2010) on a 7-point scale (1 = “unpleasant,” “difficult to process”; 7 = “pleasant,” “easy to process,” α = .76). To control for the potential influence of participants’ familiarity with the travel destination on a priori ground, participants then reported how familiar they were with the travel destination before performing the task from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). Finally, they indicated how many exterior pictures were displayed in this hotel advertisement as the manipulation checks (1 = very few; 7 = many) before debriefing about the purpose of the study.

Results and Discussion

Manipulation Check

The results confirmed our manipulation of visual perspectives was successful. Specifically, participants reported that they saw more exterior pictures in the high proportion condition (M = 4.96, SD = 1.35) than in the low proportion condition: M = 4.41, SD = 1.58; F (1, 308) = 10.77, p < .01, partial η² = .034. Besides, there was no other significant main effect (F < 1) or interaction effect, F (1, 308) = 1.51, p = .22.³

Evaluation

A two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) on hotel evaluation as a function of physical distance and visual perspective with familiarity as a covariate was conducted. Notably, the results of our analyses did not change when excluding the covariates; however, we included them to better control for any unexpected baseline variations. The results yielded only a significant interaction effect, F (1, 307) = 15.27, p < .001; partial η² = .047. The nature of the interaction was consistent with our expectations. Planned contrast revealed that when the hotel was perceived as a distal one, participants reported a more favorable evaluation of the hotel if a high proportion of exterior pictures were presented (M = 5.83, SD = .69) than if a low proportion of exterior pictures were presented: M = 5.52, SD = .94; F (1, 307) = 4.90, p < .05, partial η² = .016. However, when the hotel was a proximal one, participants reported a less favorable evaluation of the hotel in the first situation (M = 5.49, SD = .95) than in the second situation: M = 5.94, SD = .83; F (1, 307) = 10.97, p < .01, partial η² = .034. Moreover, the familiarity was the significant covariate, F (1, 307) = 25.28, p < .001, partial η² = .076. To this end, the H1 was supported. The summary results of this and the remaining studies are shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Main Results Across Experiments 1, 2, and 3.

			Proximal		Distal
Experiments			Interior	Exterior	Interior	Exterior
Experiment 1
	Evaluation		5.94 (.83)	5.49 (.95)	5.52 (.94)	5.83 (.69)
	Feeling of fluency		5.99 (.94)	5.64 (.96)	5.66 (.87)	5.98 (.83)
Experiment 2
	Evaluation		5.85 (.86)	5.42 (1.02)	5.29 (1.03)	5.66 (.93)
	Feeling of fluency		5.86 (.84)	5.47 (.99)	5.37 (1.11)	5.75 (.99)
Experiment 3
	Willing to pay	High fluency	306.41 (102.32)	259.30 (111.33)	254.59 (82.68)	298.64 (74.54)
	Willing to pay	Low fluency	216.61 (88.96)	222.93 (88.23)	215.30 (107.31)	231.57 (86.30)

Note. SDs are indicated in parentheses.

Feelings of Fluency

A similar analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the feelings of fluency revealed only a significant interaction effect of these two variables, F (1, 307) = 9.92, p < .01; partial η² = .031. Planned contrast showed that participants felt more fluent in processing a distant hotel information if a high proportion of exterior pictures were presented (M = 5.98, SD = .83) than if a low proportion of exterior pictures were presented: M = 5.66, SD = .87; F (1, 307) = 4.63, p < .05; partial η² = .015. However, the reverse was true if it was a close hotel, M_high = 5.64, SD = .96; M_low = 5.99, SD = .94; F (1, 307) = 5.31, p < .05; partial η² = .017. Finally, familiarity significantly impacts participants’ feeling on fluency, F (1, 307) = 9.56, p < .01; partial η² = .030, which was consistent with lots of existing studies (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2008; Westerman et al., 2015; Willems et al., 2007).

Mediation Test

We predicted that the interactive effect of physical distance and visual perspective led participants to perceive different levels of processing fluency, which in turn, affected their hotel evaluation. A bootstrapping analysis with 10,000 resamples (Hayes, 2017; Model 8) revealed that the influence of physical distance × proportion of exterior pictures on the hotel evaluation was mediated by the participants’ feeling fluency and the indirect effect was supported (B = .36, SE = .12; 95% confidence interval (CI) = .14 to .61). Specifically, the indirect effect of feelings of fluency was significant both in the distal condition (B = .18, SE = .08; 95% CI = .03 to .33) and in the proximal condition (B = −.19, SE = .09; 95% CI = −.36 to −.02). H2 was supported.

In Experiment 1, the psychological distance was operationalized by participants’ physical distance to a hotel. The results showed that providing a higher proportion of hotel exterior pictures increased consumers’ evaluation of a distant hotel, but decreased consumers’ evaluation of a proximal hotel. The results also showed that this interaction effect was mediated by participants’ perceived fluency when processing the hotel advertisement.

Experiment 2

To increase our findings’ internal validity, we used temporal distance to operationalize participants’ psychological distance and examined the interaction effect of visual perspective and temporal distance on the evaluations of hotels. Moreover, the experimental stimuli used in Experiment 1 is a resort hotel advertisement, one might have a concern about the generalization of the findings to a business hotel (Chu & Choi, 2000; Yavas & Babakus, 2005). In Experiment 2, we therefore employed a business hotel advertisement to test the hotel evaluation.

Method

A total of two hundred thirty-three participants (49.79% females; M_age = 26 years) were recruited from a public university in China in exchange for a small monetary reward (i.e., 2 RMB). This study used a 2 (temporal distance: distal vs. proximal) × 2 (visual perspectives: high vs. low proportion of exterior pictures) between-subjects design.

The procedure was similar to that used in Experiment 1, except for the manipulation of temporal distance. Specifically, participants were told to imagine that they plan to book a hotel for a trip in six months (in the distal condition), or in a week (in the proximal condition). As in Experiment 1, a hotel advertisement containing eight pictures was shown to them. While participants in the high proportion condition viewed three exterior pictures and five interior pictures of the hotel, those in the low proportion condition viewed one exterior picture and seven interior pictures of the same hotel. As in Experiment 1, we confirmed that all pictures were equally attractive based on a pretest that consisted of 320 responses (F < 1).

After viewing the advertisement, participants were asked to report their hotel evaluations by answering three questions similar to those used in Experiment 1 (α = .80). Then, participants indicated their feelings of fluency on the same scale in Experiment 1 (α = .70). After that, they responded to how many exterior pictures were displayed on this hotel advertisement as a check of the proportion of exterior pictures (1 = very few; 7 = many). Finally, all participants were debriefed about the purpose of this experiment.

Results and Discussion

Manipulation check. As expected, participants perceived a larger proportion of exterior pictures in the high proportion condition (M = 4.46, SD = 1.44) than in the low proportion condition (M = 3.88, SD = 1.63; F (1, 229) = 8.08, p < .01, partial η² = .034). However, the main effect of temporal distance, F (1, 229) = 1.93, p = .17, and its interaction with exterior perspective did not reach significant (F < 1).⁴

Evaluation

A two-way ANOVA analysis on hotel evaluation as a function of temporal distance and visual perspectives showed only a significant interaction effect, F (1, 229) = 10.29, p < .01; partial η² = .043. Planned contrasts showed that when participants booked the hotel for a future trip, they reported a higher evaluation of the hotel in the high proportion condition (M = 5.66, SD = .93) than in the low proportion condition (M = 5.29, SD = 1.03; F (1, 229) = 4.79, p < .05, partial η² = .020). However, when participants booked the hotel for an immediate trip, they reported a lower evaluation of the hotel in the first situation (M = 5.42, SD = 1.02) than in the second situation (M = 5.85, SD = .86; F (1, 229) = 5.50, p < .05, partial η² = .023). The main effects of exterior perspective (F < 1) and temporal distance, F (1, 229) = 1.60, p = .21, were not significant. Thus, the results supported H1.

Feelings of Fluency

A similar two-way ANOVA analysis on participants’ feelings of fluency yielded only a significant interaction, F (1, 229) = 8.86, p < .01; partial η² = .037. Planned contrasts showed that participants experienced more fluency in processing a distant hotel information if they saw a high proportion of exterior pictures (M = 5.75, SD = .99) than if they saw a low proportion of exterior pictures (M = 5.37, SD = 1.11; F (1, 229) = 4.82, p < .05, partial η² = .021). However, their feeling of fluency was lower in the first situation than in the second one, M_high = 5.47, SD = .99; M_low = 5.86, SD = .84; F (1, 229) = 4.10, p < .05, partial η² = .018, when processing a proximal hotel. Neither the main effect of visual perspective nor temporal distance was significant (F_s < 1).

Mediation Test

Using a bootstrapping analysis (Hayes, 2017; Model 8) with 10,000 resamples, we found that the interaction effect of temporal distance × visual perspective on hotel evaluation was mediated by feeling of fluency (B = .55, SE = .19; 95% CI = .19 to .95). Specifically, the indirect effect of feeling fluency was significant both in the distal condition (B = .28, SE = .14; 95% CI = .02 to .55) and in the proximal condition (B = −.28, SE = .13; 95% CI = −.54 to −.03).

In conclusion, Experiment 2 extended the findings of Experiment 1 to another dimension of psychological distance—temporal distance. Specifically, we found that when participants booked the hotel for a future trip, providing a large proportion of exterior pictures increased consumers’ feelings of fluency, leading to a more positive evaluation, in comparison to providing a small proportion of exterior pictures. However, when they booked the hotel for an immediate trip, the effect was reversed.

Experiment 3

The objectives of Experiment 3 were threefold. First, Experiment 3 aimed to provide additional support for the underlying mechanism via a moderation approach (Huang & Jia, 2019). To reiterate, our theorization suggests that the matching between visual perspective and psychological distance can increase participants’ evaluation of the hotel through feelings of processing fluency. To this end, if our explanation was correct, suppressing processing fluency by providing the difficult-to-read hotel information should turn off the focal effect. We examined whether this is the case in the study. Second, while we manipulated visual perspectives using the proportion of exterior pictures (high vs. low) in the first two studies for ecological validity, we manipulated the variable by providing either interior pictures or exterior pictures to provide a more stringent test of the “matching” effect in Experiment 3. Finally, we also aimed to rule out other explanations in addition to processing fluency, including destination information quantity and destination attitude, given that exterior pictures might convey more knowledge about a given travel destination and shape travelers’ attitude to the destination, both of which might influence participants’ hotel evaluation.

Method

Five hundred and forty-seven American participants (53.38% females; M_age = 42 years) from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) took part in this study for a small monetary reward. They were randomly assigned to one cell of a 2 (temporal distance: distal vs. proximal) × 2 (visual perspective: exterior vs. interior) × 2 (processing fluency: baseline vs. low) between-subjects design.

As in Experiment 2, participants were asked to imagine that they needed to book a hotel for a trip in one year (in the distal condition), or in a week (in the proximal condition), and were presented with a hotel advertisement containing either 12 exterior pictures (in the exterior condition) or 12 interior pictures (in the interior condition) of the same hotel. Moreover, processing fluency was manipulated using color contrast adopted from Min (2022). Specifically, the pictures in the hotel advertisement were shown in either easy-to-read color contrast like in other studies (in the baseline condition) or difficult-to-read color contrast (in the low processing fluency condition). As in previous studies, we confirmed that all pictures were equally attractive based on a pretest that consisted of 300 responses (F < 1).

After that, we measured participants’ hotel evaluations using a scale that specifically captures participants’ behavioral intentions rather than the more generic ones in prior studies. Specifically, we asked participants to indicate how much money they would be willing to pay for the hotel at most if this hotel product is listed for $329 per night adapted from Bagchi and Cheema (2013).

To rule out the two alternative explanations, we asked participants to indicate how much information about the destination is provided in the advertisement (Jacoby, 1984), and how attractive/positive the destination seems to them (α = .80; Sönmez & Sirakaya, 2002). They responded to these questions along a 9-point scale (1 = not at all; 9 = very much).

Finally, they responded to how many exterior pictures were displayed in this hotel advertisement (1 = very few; 9 = many) as a check of visual perspective, and how long it would take to start the trip (1 = in a very short time; 9 = in a very long time) as a check of temporal distance, before debriefing about the purpose of this experiment.

Results and Discussion

Manipulation Check

To check the manipulation of visual perspective, a 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA was conducted. As expected, participants reported that they viewed more exterior pictures in the exterior condition (M = 7.73, SD = 1.40) than in the interior condition (M = 4.10, SD = 2.84; F (1, 539) = 365.58, p < .001, partial η² = .404), indicating our manipulation on visual perspective was successful. Moreover, to assess the temporal distance manipulation, a similar 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA was conducted. The results revealed only a significant main effect of temporal distance, F (1, 539) = 137.15, p < .001, partial η² = .203. As expected, participants in the distal condition felt it would take a longer time to start the trip (M = 5.38, SD = 2.15) than that in the proximal condition (M = 3.37, SD = 1.87), indicating that the temporal distance was also successfully manipulated.

Willing to Pay

A similar three-way ANOVA analysis was conducted on participants’ willingness to pay. The results revealed a significant main effect of processing fluency, F (1, 539) = 52.28, p < .001, partial η² = .088, a significant two-way interaction between temporal distance and visual perspective, F (1, 539) = 9.88, p < .01, partial η² = .018, and more important, a significant three-way interaction of processing fluency, temporal distance, and visual perspective, F (1, 539) = 6.38, p < .05, partial η² = .012. Decomposing the three-way interaction suggested that when the pictures in the advertisement were easy to read (i.e., in the baseline condition), the two-way interaction between temporal distance and visual perspective was significant, F (1, 539) = 15.56, p < .001, partial η² = .028. A simple effects test indicated that when participants booked the hotel for a future trip, they were willing to pay a larger amount of money for the hotel product in the exterior condition (M = 298.64, SD = 74.54) than that in the interior condition (M = 254.59, SD = 82.68; F (1, 539) = 6.87, p < .01, partial η² = .013). However, the opposite pattern occurred when they booked the hotel for an immediate trip; that is, participants were willing to pay a smaller amount of money in the first condition (M = 259.30, SD = 111.33) than in the second condition (M = 306.41, SD = 102.32; F (1, 539) = 8.81, p < .01, partial η² = .016). This pattern of results replicated our findings in the first two studies and again supported H1.

However, when the pictures in the advertisement were difficult to read (in the low processing fluency condition), the two-way interaction between temporal distance and visual perspective became non-significant (F < 1). Specifically, participants willing to pay for the hotel did not significantly differ between exterior and interior conditions no matter when they booked the hotel for a future trip (M_exterior = 231.57, SD = 86.30 versus M_interior = 215.30, SD = 107.31; F (1, 539) = 1.04, p = .31), or for an immediate trip (M_exterior = 222.93, SD = 88.23 vs. M_interior = 216.61, SD = 88.96; F < 1). The detailed results are summarized in Table 1. These results provided further evidence for the mediator role of fluency through a moderation approach.

Alternative Explanations

A similar analysis on the amount of destination information revealed only a marginal significant main effect of visual perspective; that is, exterior pictures conveyed more destination information than interior pictures, M_exterior = 3.87, SD = 2.18 vs. M_interior = 3.55, SD = 2.16; F (1, 539) = 3.16, p = .08, partial η² = .006. However, our subsequent PROCESS mediation analysis ruled out it as an alternative explanation. Specifically, using the amount of destination information as a mediator in the bootstrapping analysis (Hayes, 2017; Model 12 using 10,000 resamples). The results did not reveal a significant indirect pathway from the three-factor interaction to the amount of money participants were willing to pay (B = −.83, SE = 5.76, 95% CI = −13.39 to 10.05), both in the high fluency condition (B = 1.25, SE = 4.23, 95% CI = −7.69 to 9.64) and in the low fluency condition (B = 2.08, SE = 3.85, 95% CI = −5.16 to 10.32).

Likewise, the analysis on destination attitude revealed a main effect of visual perspective, M_exterior = 6.45, SD = 1.71 versus M_interior = 6.08, SD = 1.67; F (1, 539) = 6.90, p < .01, partial η² = .013, and a main effect of processing fluency, M_{high fluency} = 6.48, SD = 1.55 versus M_{low fluency} = 6.06, SD = 1.80; F (1, 539) = 8.92, p < .01, partial η² = .016, none of the other effects was significant. The similar PROCESS analysis with destination attitude as mediator revealed that no significant indirect effect of it had seen (B = 4.44, SE = 8.71, 95% CI = −12.58 to 21.85), both in the high fluency condition (B = 4.24, SE = 5.77, 95% CI = −6.83 to 15.95) and the low fluency condition (B = −.21, SE = 6.63, 95% CI = −13.32 to 13.49). Therefore, the results rejected both destination information quantity and destination attitude as valid mediators of the focal effect.

By manipulating processing fluency, Experiment 3 provided further evidence for the mediator role of fluency in the “matching” effect via a moderation approach. Specifically, our results showed that once the fluency of processing information was suppressed, the “matching” effect between temporal distance and visual perspective was attenuated, therefore validating the mediating role of processing fluency in the “matching” effect. Meanwhile, the “matching” effect cannot be explained by the amount of destination information in the advertisement or by the participants’ destination attitude, thus ruling out these two alternative explanations. Finally, our “matching” effect held no matter whether we used the proportion of exterior pictures or a more stringent way to manipulate visual perspectives.

General Discussion

The present research examined the interactive effect of visual perspective and psychological distance and found that the provision of exterior or interior pictures could affect consumers’ evaluation of a hotel product, depending on their psychological distance from themselves. In addition, this interactive effect on consumer evaluation was mediated by consumers’ feelings of fluency. Specifically, a distal hotel (e.g., booking a hotel located far away, or visiting a hotel after a very long time) activates consumers’ high-level construal and increases their capability to process high-level features of the hotel. Compared to interior pictures, exterior pictures represent the high-level information of the hotel that is relatively stable and global in view. To this end, consumers who have a high construal level can more fluently process exterior pictures than interior pictures, and providing the former information can facilitate their information processing fluency and subsequently hotel evaluation (Cesario & Higgins, 2008; Coulter & Norberg, 2009; Huang et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2009). By contrast, when the hotel product is a psychologically proximal one, people use a low level of construal, provide interior pictures that focus on the low-level features, and can increase information processing fluency and hotel evaluation (Trope & Liberman, 2010).

Theoretical Implications

The present research and the conceptualization underlying it advance our knowledge in several ways. First, the current findings contribute to the existing research on construal level theory. Theoretically, our work demonstrates that exterior versus interior pictures serve as another manifestation of high-level versus low-level construal. It therefore adds to a growing literature examining factors that lead people to construe objects in high-level versus low-level terms, such as color (i.e., black-and-white vs. colorful) (H. Lee et al., 2014, 2017), content (i.e., picture versus word) (Amit et al., 2009), temperature (IJzerman & Semin, 2010), height (Aggarwal & Zhao, 2015), and novelty (Förster et al., 2009). There is a pressing need to thoroughly investigate these factors given the central role of construal level in consumer information processing, evaluation, and decision-making. Understanding these antecedents to the construal level will deepen our understanding of how people represent and interpret an object and more relevant to our research paradigm, how people evaluate a hotel.

Second, these findings add to prior research on hotel marketing by providing evidence that the relative importance of exterior or interior pictures depends on the specific situations, although there has been a long-standing debate about which types of hotel pictures are more effective in improving hotel evaluations from a practical side. From a scholarly perspective, prior studies have not yet researched the same general conclusions. While some have considered interior information as a must for consumers’ hotel evaluation and judgment so that marketing practitioners tend to feature their hotel products with rich interior pictures (Law & Cheung, 2005; Law & Hsu, 2005, 2006; Qu et al., 2000), others argue that exterior look presented the hotel image, which can attract consumers’ attention, elicit a positive emotion, as well as increase satisfaction (Han et al., 2019; Kirima et al., 2017; Picazo et al., 2019; Ren et al., 2021). The present research attempts to reconcile these divergent industry options and research findings by showing that providing more exterior pictorial information can positively influence consumers’ evaluation when the focal hotel is a psychologically distal one, but negatively affect consumers’ evaluation when the hotel is a proximal one. That is, the effectiveness of exterior versus interior pictures in determining a hotel’s evaluation depends on the distance attributes of the hotel.

Finally, prior research has identified a wide variety of factors that might affect consumers’ hotel evaluations, such as pricing strategy, pictures, online reviews, virtual reality technology, and eco-friendly elements (Chan et al., 2017; Hu, 2012; Leung et al., 2020; Qu et al., 2000; Sparks & Browning, 2011; Virginia Phelan et al., 2011; Yoon et al., 2020). Most of the research focuses on a linear relationship, however. For example, Virginia Phelan et al. (2011) found that to the extent the pictorial information of a hotel is rich, consumers are more likely to experience enjoyment and book the hotel. Likewise, Leung et al. (2020) showed that virtual reality application improves consumers’ sensory simulation of experience and their positive attitudes toward a hotel. The present research innovatively distinguishes two types of hotel products (i.e., proximal vs. distal) based on the construal level theory (Liberman et al., 2007; Trope & Liberman, 2010, 2012) and identifies two types of pictorial information (i.e., interiors vs. exteriors). Notably, our results did not support a linear relationship between pictorial information and hotel evaluations. Instead, they showed that consumers would form a more favorable evaluation of a distal hotel product if more exterior pictures are provided than more interior pictures are available, but would form a more favorable evaluation of a proximal hotel product in the second situation than in the first situation, an interaction effect that has been seldom investigated in previous hotel evaluation researches to the best of our knowledge.

Practical Implications

Our research also has implications for hotel marketing practitioners. First, as mentioned previously, it is always controversial in practice concerning which types of pictures are more effective in improving hotel evaluations: exterior or interior (Ana, 2016; Ddreps, 2022; LinkedIn, 2022), which has long perplexed hotel marketing professionals. The present research suggests that when the hotel product is a distal one (e.g., international travel, or early booking), hotel marketing professionals should provide more exterior pictures to increase the attractiveness of the product. However, if the product is a proximal one, the provision of interior pictures might work. More importantly, we further suggest that the effectiveness of these practices was driven by the consistency between consumers’ construal level activated by their psychological distance to a hotel and the type of pictorial information provided at the time of judgment. The consistency between them elicits a feeling of fluency, which then improves the hotel evaluations (Chae & Hoegg, 2013; Huang et al., 2017; Wadhwa & Zhang, 2015; Yan, 2016).

Relatedly, our pilot study (see Appendix B) showed that hotel marketing professionals tend to provide a high proportion of exterior pictures when the target hotel is a physically distal one, but provide a low proportion when the hotel is a physically proximal one. Although this practice has been used, its effectiveness remains unclear. Through three experiments, we provided empirical evidence for the effectiveness of this practice.

Finally, hotel marketing professionals need to cater more effectively to consumers with different booking needs, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach to their online platforms. For example, our findings suggest that for consumers who book a hotel for an international trip or for a future trip, it might be beneficial for hotel marketing professionals to present more exterior pictures about a given hotel product to elicit consumers’ feelings of fluency and improve their hotel evaluations. For consumers who book a hotel for a domestic trip or for an immediate trip, by contrast, it might be beneficial to display more interior pictures to facilitate a positive evaluation of the hotel. In fact, some platforms have embarked on this endeavor. For example, Tuniu (another leading online travel agency in China) tends to introduce a single tourism product on different web pages with different pictorial information when it is first released on the platform and when it is about to expire (e.g., only one week or even just a few days left before the trip departure) (Y. Jia et al., 2021). Thus, an effective strategy would be to design different views for consumers with different booking needs.

Limitations and Future Research

Despite the aforementioned implications of the present research, it has limitations as well. In the three experiments, we only focused on two dimensions of psychological distance and neglected the social distance and probabilistic distance. This is so because these dimension has seldom been used to feature a hotel product (Y. Jia et al., 2021). However, if our conceptualization holds, exterior pictures should be preferred when consumers choose a hotel product for others (i.e., social distal) rather than when they choose one for themselves (i.e., social proximal), and when they are uncertain about booking a hotel (i.e., hypothetically distal) rather than when they are certain to book a hotel (i.e., hypothetically proximal). The underlying causes might also be attributed to the feeling of fluency as a consequence of the matching between consumers’ psychological distance and pictures’ perspective.

Conclusion

To sum up, based on construal level theory (Liberman et al., 2007; Trope & Liberman, 2012) and “matching” theory (Byun & Jang, 2015; Higgins et al., 2003; Kim et al., 2009; Shao et al., 2020; Thompson & Hamilton, 2006), the present research finds that including exterior visual perspective increases the evaluation of hotel when consumers perceive themselves to be distal to the hotel. However, this effect would be reversed when they perceive themselves to be proximal to it. This effect is driven by the consistency between consumers’ construal level activated by their psychological distance to a hotel and the type of pictorial information provided at the time of judgment. These findings provide actionable guidance for hotel marketing professionals concerning how to feature their hotel products with different pictures’ perspectives depending on different distance attributes.

Supplemental Material

sj-doc-1-cqx-10.1177_19389655231214710 – Supplemental material for Do Visual Perspectives Matter?: The “Matching” Between Visual Perspectives and Psychological Distance Improves Hotel Evaluations

Supplemental material, sj-doc-1-cqx-10.1177_19389655231214710 for Do Visual Perspectives Matter?: The “Matching” Between Visual Perspectives and Psychological Distance Improves Hotel Evaluations by Jun Ouyang, Yanli Jia and Qiang Guo in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

Supplemental Material

sj-doc-2-cqx-10.1177_19389655231214710 – Supplemental material for Do Visual Perspectives Matter?: The “Matching” Between Visual Perspectives and Psychological Distance Improves Hotel Evaluations

Supplemental material, sj-doc-2-cqx-10.1177_19389655231214710 for Do Visual Perspectives Matter?: The “Matching” Between Visual Perspectives and Psychological Distance Improves Hotel Evaluations by Jun Ouyang, Yanli Jia and Qiang Guo in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was partially supported by the Social Science Foundation of Fujian Province (Grant No. FJ2022BF025), and the Science and Technology Innovation Think Tank Research Project Fund of Fujian Provincial Science and Technology Association (Grant No. FJKX-2022XKB017) awarded to the first author, the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province of China (No.2022J01039) awarded to the second author, and the Specific Research Fund of the Innovation Platform for Academicians of Hainan Province (Grant No. YSPTZX202035) awarded to the third author. We declare that we have no conflict of interest to this research.

ORCID iDs

Jun Ouyang

Yanli Jia

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biographies

Jun Ouyang (ouyangjun1209@163.com) is an assistant professor of marketing at Minnan Normal University. She obtained a Ph.D. degree in marketing from Xiamen University, China. Her work has appeared in Tourism Management, Psychology & Marketing, and others.

Yanli Jia (yanlijia@xmu.edu.cn) is an Associate Professor of marketing at Xiamen University, China. She obtained a Ph.D. degree in marketing from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, China. Her work has appeared in Tourism Management, Journal of Consumer Psychology, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and others.

Qiang Guo (gq@hainanu.edu.cn) is a professor of tourism at Hainan University. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in management science from the University of Science and Technology of China. His work has appeared in Tourism Management, Tourism Economics, International Journal of Hospitality Management and others.

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