When Precision Backfires: How AI Price Presentation Shapes Perceived Price Discrimination

This study investigates how price precision from an AI recommendation agent affects tourists’ perceptions of price discrimination and their behavioral responses, depending on dispositional cognitive trust in AI competence. Drawing from psychological pricing and AI–consumer interaction research, four experiments in airline booking contexts were conducted. Results reveal that precise prices presented by AI increase perceived price discrimination, which lowers recommendation acceptance and raises negative word-of-mouth intentions. These effects occur only in AI price presentation contexts and vanish when the same prices are shown by human or company. Additionally, dispositional cognitive trust in AI competence moderates the process: consumers with low trust are more likely to perceive precise AI prices as discriminatory, while this effect weakens for high-trust consumers. This study advances behavioral pricing research in AI price presentation as a novel psychological cue shaping discrimination inferences. In practice, it offers guidance for designing psychologically sensitive AI price communication strategies.