Heuristics in digital communication media: theoretical explications and empirical observations

This study explicates the process in which heuristics triggered by technological features of digital communication media affect persuasive outcomes and demonstrates the actual operation of a heuristic by validating the “priming plus unrelated tasks” procedure and the moderated mediation analysis strategy proposed by Bellur and Sundar (2014) for measuring heuristics. In a between-subjects experiment \((N = 100)\), the being-here heuristic primed and non-primed participants were assigned a smartphone with either a large or small screen. The results indicate that both manipulations are key to greater self-reported use of the heuristic and affective trust. A follow-up analysis based on the proposed method using the PROCESS macro for SPSS captured the actual operation of the being-there heuristic. This provides statistical evidence of the role that the being-there heuristic plays in explaining why and how a larger screen leads to greater affective trust, thereby demonstrating the validity and applicability of the proposed method.