The literature on decision support suggests that the usefulness of information provided by social media depends upon its perceived trustworthiness and users’ cognitive functions and personality (Metzger, 2007; Schiebener et al., 2013).
The potential moderating and mediating effects of a person’s characteristics and situational aspects in predicting the usefulness of information provided by social media for the person’s decisions in everyday life have not yet been systematically investigated.
This project addresses the interaction of the user’s characteristics and the value that different information sources provided by social media may have for the user within the field of health and fitness. An experimentally manipulated social media site will be used, on which evaluative information about different health products and medical doctors, as well as activities (e.g., regional sports clubs) is provided. In addition, information from an automated recommender system and recommendations from other sources (e.g. classical magazines, personal friends) will also be provided. The information from other individual users will differ with respect to its emotional valence and intensity. It is hypothesised that the different recommendation sources will have a differential impact on the user’s decisions and that this influence will interact with the type of decision to be made, the presentation of the recommendation, and the personal characteristics of the user. The user’s subjective emotional reactions to emotionally presented information provided by social media should predict his/her trust in the recommending sources, which should in turn influence the user’s decisions.
The methods employed will encompass experimental investigation, choice-based conjoint design, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), personality inventories, and cognitive tasks.
The project will contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the usefulness of information provided by social media for decision making in everyday life. It will also help to provide an understanding of how information should be designed to improve decision making and to reduce uncertainty in the context of using social media information functionally in daily life.