<b>Research Note</b>—The Influence of Trade-off Difficulty Caused by Preference Elicitation Methods on User Acceptance of Recommendation Agents Across Loss and Gain Conditions
Authors: Lee, Young Eun; Benbasat, Izak
Journal: Information Systems Research (2011)
<jats:p> Prior studies on product recommendation agents (RAs) have been based on the effort-accuracy perspective in which the amount of effort required to make a decision and the accuracy of such decisions are two dominant antecedents of user acceptance of RAs. The current study extends the effort-accuracy perspective by considering trade-off difficulty, a type of negative emotion that arises when attainment of one's goals is blocked by the attainment of other goals; consequently, one must make trade-offs among the conflicting goals. Many product purchase choices for which RAs are used require users to make trade-offs among conflicting product attributes. A key feature of RAs, the preference elicitation method (PEM), often compels users to make explicit trade-offs. We examine whether an RA's PEM generates trade-off difficulty, which, in turn, affects users' evaluations (i.e., perceived amount of effort and perceived accuracy of recommendations) and the resultant acceptance of the RA. Trade-off difficulty influences users' evaluations of an RA via perceived control over execution of the RA PEM. In addition, the decision context in which users employ a PEM moderates the degree to wh…