When I was actively involved as a pilot in the general aviation world, it was always an unfortunate truth that propellers were second-class and an automatic downer. People would lead clients or friends out to their super-hot Cheyenne 400 or Avanti or top-of-the-line King Air, and the reaction invariably was, "Jeez, I thought you said you had a JET, not a little prop plane..."
Certainly passengers troop out to RJs without a care and are repelled by equally large, and often equally sophisticated, turboprops. Would this be a factor in airlines' choices of aircraft, or are they purely driven by operating economies?