Emotion and Rationality in Web Information: An Eye-Tracking Study

Web pages are the main interface of human-computer interaction on the Internet. Although several factors of successful Web page design have been studied, few researches considered the utility and effectiveness of emotion and rationality in Web information for e-Commerce. This study conducted an eye-tracking experiment to address how emotional and rational appeals mediate the users' Web commercial information perceiving, as reflected by their own eye movements. The major finding is that the mean fixation duration for participants to obtain information appealed in emotional strategy is significant shorter than those appealed in rational strategy. The result may indicate that Web commercial information in rational strategy is more difficult to be extracted, and therefore suffers from more cognitive processes.