Information Overload and Usage of Recommendations

This research examines the antecedents of information overload and recommendation agents’ consultation and their effects on reactance and choice quality. We propose that information overload and the user need for cognition affect the tendency to employ decision heuristic (consulting a recommendation agent) and shape the user reactance to recommendations. A fully randomized experiment with different levels of information loads that involved 466 individuals with the task of choosing a laptop and the option to consult a recommendation agent is performed. Results show that users opted to consult the recommendation agent more as information loads and as perceived overload increases and that product recommendations were salient in enhancing choice, particularly when the information was less diagnostic (for choice sets with proportional distribution of attribute levels across alternatives). Results further reveal that as perceived overload increases, people show less reactance to recommendations. Whereas users consulting the recommendations at higher overload levels had generally better choices, they showed higher confidence in their choices only when they conform rather than react to recommendations.