Booking on-line or not: A decision rule approach

Internet technology has become a prominent distribution channel in the tourism industry. Any insight into decision making behavior in the online environment could be critical to business success. We explore the behavior of Iranian tourists in the online environment to specify how different factors affect tourists' decision to use online hotel booking websites. We use a Dominance-based rough set (DRS) in order to model tourists' choice. Besides the novelty of the model being used, this paper is one of the first to explore Iranian tourists' on-line behavior and it also deepens our general understanding of on-line decision making.

► Explores customers choices in the online environment
► A Dominance-based rough set is applied to study the use of hotel booking sites.
► Perceived risk and WOM dominate Iranian tourists' online behavior.
► Males take more risks when their perception of the website quality is high.