Abstract During an online session, a user may visit a number of websites, often following hyperlinks from one website to the next or using a search results page to find and visit pages of interest. In doing so, the user can lose track of which sites were visited and which were helpful in meeting the objective. Thus, sites that may have provided value to the user may not receive expected positive effects such as loyalty and intention to return. It is thus crucial to understand if and how an individual website is perceived by users within the context of multi-website online sessions—particularly in predicting desired outcomes, such as user loyalty, trust, brand image, and revisit intentions. To address this problem, we conceptualize the Web as a geography traversed by users who cross digital borders as they move from one website location to another. We introduce the concept of border strength, or the degree to which digital media artifacts mark a transition to a website, and propose a positive effect of border strength on users’ recognition of their locations. We then consider users’ attribution of credit for assistance in successfully completing an online task to those websites and their owners that supported the task. This attribution is a function of border strength and location recognition. We test these hypotheses using experimental data, which show that, indeed, some websites go unrecognized and that stronger borders increase users’ recognition of having visited a website and users’ credit attribution for their experience to the site. Our findings demonstrate the usefulness of the geography metaphor, suggest the need to further study dynamics regarding individual sites within the context of multi-site sessions and show the usefulness of erecting stronger borders to mark the entry into digital locations.

中文翻译：

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数字地理中的数字边界、位置识别和经验归因

摘要 在在线会话期间，用户可能会访问多个网站，通常是通过从一个网站到下一个网站的超链接或使用搜索结果页面来查找和访问感兴趣的页面。这样做时，用户可能会忘记访问了哪些站点以及哪些站点有助于实现目标。因此，可能为用户提供了价值的网站可能不会收到预期的积极影响，例如忠诚度和回归意向。因此，了解用户是否以及如何在多网站在线会话的上下文中感知单个网站至关重要，尤其是在预测预期结果方面，例如用户忠诚度、信任、品牌形象和重访意图。为了解决这个问题，我们将 Web 概念化为用户从一个网站位置移动到另一个位置时跨越数字边界的地理区域。我们引入了边界强度的概念，即数字媒体工件标志着向网站过渡的程度，并提出了边界强度对用户对其位置识别的积极影响。然后，我们考虑用户将帮助成功完成在线任务的信用归因于支持该任务的那些网站及其所有者。这种归因是边界强度和位置识别的函数。我们使用实验数据测试了这些假设，这些数据表明，确实有些网站无法识别，而更强的边界会提高用户对访问过网站的认可度以及用户对网站体验的信用归因。我们的发现证明了地理隐喻的有用性，