Time and Distance: Asymmetries in Consumer Trip Knowledge and Judgments

We find that for shopping trip decisions, consumers' driving time knowledge (how long it takes to get there) is both more accessible from memory and more accurate than their corresponding driving distance knowledge. In memory-based judgments, chronically more accessible time knowledge had a dominant influence on distance judgments. Given a map, consumers still relied on their time knowledge to infer trip distance. Moreover, consumers' estimated time and distance judgments showed inflated correlations regardless of underlying actual correlations, which may approach zero in urban environments. Consequently, there appears to be an asymmetric reliance on time knowledge when making trip decisions. Copyright 2003 by the University of Chicago.