How Do the Internet Buyers' Decisions Be Affected? - An Experimental Study of Risky Choice Framing Effect

For Net-enhanced organizations (NEOs), business is conducted at a distance and risks are magnified. In effect, Internet buyers can solely rely on information provided by the Web sites to make decisions. Consequently, the way to present information favorable to the Internet business operators is very important. This study aims to understand whether positively and negatively framed messages result in different choices made by the Internet buyers. Further, the effect of subject’s intrinsic self-relevance to the framing effect is also considered in the current study. The research is conducted by using laboratory experiment. The results indicate that the risky choice framing effect partly exists in Internet buyers’ product decisions. Specifically, when the subjects are highly related to the research context, they won’t be affected by the framing of messages because they are eager to obtain the target product. As a result, most subjects are prone to avoid risks. On the other hand, there is significant risky choice framing effect for subjects with low intrinsic self-relevance. In this group, subjects are prone to avoid risks when they were presented with positive information, whereas most people incline to take risks, and thus choose the risky option if the problem are framed negatively.