Assessing the Credibility of Decisional Guidance Delivered by Information Systems

Abstract This work investigates the independent and joint influences of suggestive guidance and credibility indicators in a repeated choice environment laden with risk and uncertainty. Consistent with expectations, results from two studies reveal that aggressive and conservative suggestive guidance influence participant decision making. Credibility indicators partially moderate these relationships such that low credibility indicators lead to increased risk taking when suggestive guidance is conservative and decreased risk taking when suggestive guidance is aggressive. Post hoc analyses designed to examine differences in results across the two studies reveal unexpected differences in risk trends across participant type. Together, these findings contribute to the decision support system (DSS) literature by illustrating how credibility indicators can push users toward or away from either beneficial or detrimental suggestive guidance, and further, by challenging the commonly held assumption that inexperienced and experienced decision makers accept similar levels of risk in DSS settings where risk and uncertainty prevail.