How Do Tourists Use Metaheuristics for Decision-Making Mediated by Smartphones in a Destination?
通过事件叙事访谈，研究游客在目的地如何借助智能手机使用元启发式（如序列启发式）做出接近最优的现场决策，并识别出两种决策情境和三个决策步骤。
The use of smartphones has empowered tourists to make travel decisions while at a destination. The purpose of this paper is to explore how tourists use metaheuristics to achieve a near-optimal solution for onsite decisions mediated by smartphones. An event-based narrative inquiry technique with semi-structured interviews was used to collect the data. The findings identify two types of decision contexts based on temporal and geographic distance to direct experience/consumption. The findings also reveal that tourists use serial heuristics for a near-optimal solution under different decision contexts, and this solution is achieved through three steps of a tourist decision journey including the initialization solution, acceptance and selection, and final decision. These heuristics can be consciously deployed or unconsciously triggered. The findings offer marketing managers direction regarding what to emphasize when delivering marketing stimuli in onsite destination decision-making contexts.