Recommendation Agents for Electronic Commerce: Effects of Explanation Facilities on Trusting Beliefs.

Author List: Wang, Weiquan; Benbasat, Izak;

Journal of Management Information Systems, 2007, Volume 23, Issue 4, Page 217-246.

We empirically test the effects of explanation facilities on consumers' initial trusting beliefs concerning online recommendation agents (RAs). RAs provide online shopping advice based on user-specified needs and preferences. The characteristics of RAs that may hamper consumers' trust building in the RAs are identified, and the provision of explanation facilities is proposed as a knowledge-based approach to enhance consumers' trusting beliefs by dealing with these obstacles. This study examines the effects of three types of explanations about an RA and its use--how, why, and trade-off explanations--on consumers' trusting beliefs in an RA's competence, benevolence, and integrity. An RA was built as the experimental platform and a laboratory experiment was conducted. The results confirm the important role of explanation facilities in enhancing consumers' initial trusting beliefs and indicate that consumers' use of different types of explanations enhances different trusting beliefs: the use of how explanations increases their competence and benevolence beliefs, the use of why explanations increases their benevolence beliefs, and the use of trade-off explanations increases their integrity beliefs.

Keywords: decision support; decisional guidance; electronic commerce; explanations; recommendation agents; trust

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List of Topics

#172	0.291	trust trusting study online perceived beliefs e-commerce intention trustworthiness relationships benevolence initial importance trust-building examines discussed building future context transactions
#183	0.220	explanations explanation bias use kbs biases facilities cognitive making judgment decisions likely decision important prior judgments feedback types difficult lead
#94	0.187	effort users advice ras trade-off recommendation agents difficulty decision make acceptance product loss trade-offs context perceived influence laboratory reasons consumers
#118	0.123	online consumers consumer product purchase shopping e-commerce products commerce website electronic results study behavior experience b2c impact internet purchases websites
#42	0.061	perceived results study field individual support effects microcomputer pressure external usefulness test psychological obligations characteristics variables indicate existence availability investigating