Name Heuristic Bias: How Can the Names of Accommodations Influence Individual Judgments?

Abstract

During online purchases, tourists typically begin by retrieving the names of accommodations and subsequently proceed to explore additional information such as peer reviews and the host’s gender. However, it remains unclear whether and how name cues bias tourists’ attitudes and purchase decisions, and how additional information may modify these biases. In a series of studies, we find, firstly, that tourists perceive accommodations with feminine names as being warmer, while those with masculine names are seen as more competent. Secondly, the host’s gender and peers’ ambivalent reviews, can moderately adjust but cannot reverse the initial judgments of warmth or competence induced by the names. Thirdly, this effect is consistent across different tourists’ genders. These findings contribute to our understanding of how tourists formulate judgments in contexts of uncertainty and abundant information, underscore the significance of the initial cues given by the names of accommodations, and expand upon the heuristic bias theory.