The rapid development of sharing economy in hospitality and tourism area has reshaped the traditional business model. With the expansion of peer-to-peer accommodation platforms, visual information-particularly room photos-show its decisive influence in customer booking behaviour. While existing studies recognised the significant role of room photos in conveying room quality, aesthetics, and authenticity, little is known about the psychological mechanism by which rhetorical visual images influences customer judgement and intentions in a digital, access-based environment. Addressing the research gaps, this thesis focuses on how the rhetorical visual signals embedded in hosts uploaded unprofessional Airbnb room photos affect customers’ cognitive and affective responses, ultimately shaping booking intention. This research grounded in Signalling theory, integrated with psychological ownership (PO) theory and symbolic self-completion (SSC) theory develops a multidimensional framework. The framework explains how customers interpret visual information, form emotional and identity- based connections to depicted space, and turn psychological reactions into behavioural outcome. The conceptual model decomposes the traditional linear signalling process into sequential mechanism with four components: visual signals, psychological motivations, psychological outcomes, and behavioural outcomes. Through the structure, this study explores how three key psychological motivations: sense of home, symbolic identity, and internal identity emerge from rhetorical visual elements in room photos. These psychological antecedents collectively stimulate psychological ownership, enabling viewers to mentally project themselves into a space they do not physically live in. Meanwhile, symbolic cues within room photos invite viewers to align the space with their aspirational or ideal identity, triggering symbolic self-completion. This study further examines the mediating effect of symbolic self-completion between psychological ownership and booking intention (BI), clarifying whether symbolic fulfilment reinforces or substitutes the influence of ownership feelings on behavioural decisions. This study empirically validates the findings through quantitative method and develops a novel measurement scale captures multiple dimensions of visual rhetoric. Data were collected through an online questionnaire survey on Credamo conducted administered to Chinese users with prior Airbnb booking experience within the last six months, generating 718 valid responses. The results confirm that rhetorical information features in amateur photographers' work, including touches of warmth, personalized decorations, lifestyle traces, and coherent visual narratives evoke customer emotional connection and identity resonance with the room depicted in the photos from aesthetic, symbolic, and informational perspectives. Visual rhetoric, as information signals, evoke customers' sense of belonging, symbolic identity, and internal identity, significantly enhancing psychological ownership and symbolic self-completion, both of which can positively predict booking intentions. Symbolic self-completion partially mediated the psychological ownership influence to booking intention, suggesting that in addition to direct influence customer booking decisions, psychological ownership also enhanced customer sense of identity and further influences customer decisions. The theoretical contribution of this study lies in refining the Signalling theory framework by detailing the psychological microprocesses involved in interpreting visual signals. Meanwhile, the findings of this study extending the application of psychological ownership theory and symbolic self-completion theory in digital, access-based sharing economy contexts, and confirm the mediating effect of symbolic self-completion. Furthermore, this study is the first to confirm the impact of visual rhetoric as an information signal on customer psychology and behaviour. Practically, this research offers clear insights for hosts and platform operators, including validated tools for quantifying visual rhetoric, strategies for visual content design, creating emotionally resonant photographs, and "visual matching" systems that pair customer identity preferences with room images. This research highlights the persuasive power of visual rhetoric in peer-to-peer accommodation and demonstrates how the influence of daily, unretouched photos surpasses professionally produced images by creating a sense of authenticity, belonging, and self-expression.
| Date of Award | 15 Jul 2026 |
|---|
| Original language | English |
|---|
| Supervisor | Snow Wu (Main Supervisor) & Shona Bettany (Co-Supervisor) |
|---|