Assessing the affective impact of social navigational tools in facilitating exploratory search
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Wu, Wan-Ching
Abstract
The purpose of the study is to examine whether social navigational tools enhance the affective aspects of user experience when they engage in exploratory search with online bookstores. Theory of flow is applied to assess the affective aspects of exploratory search experience. Furthermore, the study also investigates the impact of users’ affective experience on revisit intention, and the impact of social navigational tools on users’ information processing as well as decision making behavior, in terms of decision confidence, gained knowledge and search effort.
Some major findings are as follows. Firstly, social navigational tools significantly affect the perceived pleasure derived from the search experience. Tasks completed with the interface equipped with social navigational tools led to higher degree of pleasure, and more subjects self-reported entering the flow state while using the interface with social navigational tools than the number of subjects who experienced flow when using the interface without social navigational tools.
Secondly, participants who experienced higher degree of pleasure, as measured by flow experience in this research, also have stronger revisit intention. The finding supports the postulation that an online service more conducive to flow experience will also obtain higher degree of customer loyalty.
Lastly, navigational tools exert evident impact on information processing and decision making behaviors. As subjects engaged in exploratory search with the interface equipped with social navigational tools, both their decision confidence and knowledge gained increased. More mouse clicks and searches were also recorded when the social navigational tools are made available. While these measures were conventionally considered, from usability perspective, indications of undesirable search costs, it is argued that the results show that the social navigational tools were more conducive to higher level of user online activities. In other words, they promoted higher level of exploratory activities.
Subjects
social navigational tools
pleasure of search
affective search experience
flow theory
experiential task
exploratory search
online bookstore
Type
thesis
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