Website Interactivity and User Involvement: The Moderating Effects of need for Cognition

This study investigated the relationships between consumer involvement and each of the three facets of interactivity: control, communication direction, and synchronicity, as well as the moderating effect of need for cognition on these relationships. An experiment was designed to test the proposed hypotheses and 320 volunteers participated in this experiment. The empirical results show that all three facets of interactivity positively affect consumer involvement, and that the need for cognition moderates such positive relationships in various ways. The effects of control and communication direction on involvement are stronger for consumers with a high degree of need for cognition than for those with a low degree of need for cognition. On the other hand, the effect of synchronicity on involvement is more conspicuous when the degree of need for cognition is low. These results suggest the active nature of control and two-way communication compared to the passive nature of synchronicity. Finally, managerial implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.