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234JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
1973),with the development of computers and computerized networks,understanding information control has become much more important.This increa in relevance is primarily due to two characteristics of electronic communication. First,while traditional mass communication media such as television and print ads differ on their level of information control,this difference has not been very large.In contrast, electronic communication has the potential for extremely high levels of information control,tremendously increasing its possible range.Second,while traditional communication media have afixed level of information ,tele-vision has a very low level of information control),the level of information control of electronic communication channels is variable and can be chon by the marketer or information provider.
BENEFITS AND DISADVANTAGES OF INFORMATION CONTROL
Much like information arch(Hagerty and Aaker1984; Ratchford1982),control over the informationflow ems to have both advantages and disadvantages(benefits and costs).In terms of benefits,information control allows con-sumers to deal with information systems that betterfit their individual informational needs and are moreflexible(Klein-muntz and Schkade1993;Schkade and Kleinmuntz1994), whereas in terms of the costs,information control requires the ur to invest processing resources in managing the in-formationflow.In the next ctions,the mechanisms un-derlying the advantages and disadvantages associated with information control will be prented in more detail.The empirical part of the article will test the different aspects of information control,and the results will be discusd with regard to their implications for interactive media and in particular to electronic communication and commerce. Advantages of Controlling the Information Flow Initial support for the benefits of information control comes from work on learning relationships in probabilistic environments(e Hammond,McClelland,and Mumpower 1980;Hammond et al.1975).In an interesting paper,Klay-man(1988)examined how control over the learning envi-ronment influences subjects’ability to learn probabilistic relationship among attributes.Learning the relationships was done under one of two learning environments.In the interactive environment subjects determined for themlves the configuration of the stimuli to be tested(size,shape,and shading),while in the noninteractive environment subjects were given a specific and predetermined learning environ-ment.
The results showed that compared with subjects who were given afixed learning environment,subjects who de-signed their own learning environment were more effective learners and had a better command of the environments’underlying structure.
Similar results were also found by Kuhn and Ho(1980) in a paper on the development of children’s thinking.In this work,Kuhn and Ho(1980)showed that children who could choo the games in which they wanted to engage(a high level of control)had an improved ability to create new rea-soning strategies compared with yoked(a low level of con-trol)and control subjects.This improvement in reasoning ability was attributed by the authors to an improvement in the anticipatory schemas regarding the outcomes of their actions.That is,control not only improved understanding of a specific task but it also caud a more global improve-ment in formal operations.
Combined,the results suggest that information control improves performance by improving thefit between actions and outcomes and by improving anticipatory schemes(e also work on the development of the visual system,Held and Hein[1963]).In addition,increasing the ability to con-trol informationflow should also increa consumers’ability to explore and understand the information structure.Thus, the core hypothesis of the current article is that information control is beneficial becau having an interactive and dy-namic information system can maximize thefit between hetero
geneous and dynamic needs for information and the information available(Alba and Hutchinson1987;Einhorn and Hogarth1981;Payne,Bettman,and Johnson1993). Within this general heterogeneity argument,information control ems to have two possible benefits:thefirst has to do with heterogeneity between consumers(Beatty and Smith 1987;Fur,Punj,and Stewart1984;Jacoby,Chestnut,and Fisher1978),and the cond has to do with heterogeneity within consumers over time(Haur,Urban,and Weinberg 1993).Thefirst component of heterogeneity(which will be termed“individual heterogeneity”)is conceptualized as a stable overall difference in individuals’preferences for in-formation prentation and processing.For example,one consumer may prefer to view information by attributes, while another might prefer to view the same information by products.Conquently,consumers would choo different preferred formats on a permanent basis.One example for such a difference is the differential preference consumers have for content in“push technology”on-line media.The cond,and more interesting,component of heterogeneity (which will be termed“dynamic heterogeneity”)is concep-tualized here as the changing needs for information during the information acquisition process itlf(e Beach1993; Wright and Barbour1997).The notion of dynamic heter-ogeneity is that the benefits of controlling the information flow ari from the fact that information control allows for testing and updating hypothes bad on one’s mental model.The human brain is assumed to be a n-making organ,and having control ov
er the environment permits information acquisition to be integrally linked into the act of n-making.Having control over the stimuli allows consumers to generate and test the hypothesis in which they are interested.Such conceptualization of dynamic hetero-geneity relates to the idea of constructive preferences and contingent strategies,where the information prented itlf changes the need for future information(Payne et al.1993; Slovic,Griffin,and Tversky1990).As an example of this dynamic heterogeneity component,consider a consumer
CONTROLLING THE INFORMATION FLOW235
who notices a diagnostic difference on some attribute that changes his perception of different attributes and hence his needs for future information(e Ariely and Wallsten1995; Montgomery1983).
The two aspects of information control(individual het-erogeneity and dynamic heterogeneity)are typically con-founded or correlated in most real world information sys-tems.High levels of information control often allow the urs of information systems to have an overall strategy for the information prentation,while at the same time ena-bling them to pick specific characteristics of the information itlf.Nevertheless,the task of teasing the two aspects apart could be theoretically important and w
ill be dealt with later(experiment3).To summarize,although the exact or-igin of the benefits related to information control is not yet clear,there are theoretical reasons to suspect that there is much potential for the benefits to emerge.However,as mentioned earlier,there are also reasons to suspect that in-formation control can be associated with incread demands on processing resources and therefore could have a negative effect on consumers’ability to process information(Bettman 1975;Bettman,Payne,and Staelin1986;Scammon1977). The ideas underlying the processing costs of information control are prented in the next ction. Disadvantages of Controlling the Information Flow
In a highly interactive environment,having to control the informationflow can be en as a task in itlf(e Posner 1986;Treisman and Davies1973).In such environments, consumers have to perform two tasks:one is to understand the information and the cond is to manage the information flow(choo what information will be prentedfirst,for how long,what aspects of the information will be perud next,and in what order,etc.).If processing resources are limited(Broadbent1971;Kahneman1973;March1978; Treisman1969),such dual tasks can cau consumers in highly interactive environments to have reduced resources available to process the information itlf(Anderson1983). More direct evidence supporting the idea that a condary task ca
n increa cognitive load and hence impede perform-ance in the primary task comes from work on learning tactile mazes.Bongard(1995)showed that incread control over punishment contingencies caus subjects to have higher cardiovascular activity,increas the load on their cognitive capacity,and as a conquence decreas their performance on a comprehension task.Similarly,in their work on learn-ing tactile mazes,Richardson,Wuillemin,and MacKintosh (1981)demonstrated that subjects who had control over the pattern of maze learning showed wor performance and learning speed compared to the passive(yoked)subjects who only experienced the maze and did not determine the arch pattern within it.In sum,both of the studies on dual tasks show that under some conditions,the need to make decisions in one task(controlling the task)incread demand on cognitive resources and,becau of cognitive limitations,decread performance in the comprehension task.
Controlling the informationflow in computerized arch tasks is different from traditional dual tasks in two important ways(e Posner1986;Shiffrin and Schneider1977;Spelke, Hirst,and Neisr1976).First,while in the dual task lit-erature the tasks are usually independent from each other, in our ca the two tasks of processing the information and managing it are related and depend on each other.Second, this dependency is in the“wrong direction.”In the dual task literature t
here is a main task and a condary task,and limited capacity is demonstrated by lower performance on the condary task.In our ca,the main task of under-standing the information is dependent on the condary task of managing it.In other words,in order to perform well on the main task(understand and judge the information),sub-jects have to be able to perform well on the condary task (manage the information system).Despite the interesting differences,the ideas of incread demands due to additional tasks and their potential detrimental effects are applicable and most likely even stronger due to their dependency. Summary and Hypothes
To summarize,it ems that information control has both positive and negative effects on performance.The positive effect is due to the value of the information itlf combined with the ur’s ability to lect and process the specific information that is most relevant to the ur(heterogeneity). The negative effect is due to the additional resources de-manded by the task of managing the informationflow cou-pled with limited processing capacity.In addition,consid-ering information control as a task by itlf with its own demands brings to mind notions regarding learning and au-tomaticity over time(Alba and Hutchinson1987;Bryan and Harter1899;Spelke et al.1976).As consumers continuously engage in such tasks,the cognitive effort required for con-trolling the informationflow can be reduced,which can free some of the cognitive resources for processing the infor-mation itlf.
A central prediction of the ideas is that for very simple electronic stores,having high information control will be better than having low information control.However,when dealing with electronic stores that are more complicated to understand and u,the pattern of results will be different. In such cas,the implication is that on initial u consumers who have high information control will suffer a larger per-formance loss than consumers who have low information control.However,with incread experience,consumers who have high information control will be able to improve faster and perform better.Therefore the overall prediction is a three-way interaction between the level of information control,the cognitive load impod by the information sys-tem,and the amount of experience with the interface.The form of the interaction is that having high information con-trol in a simple system always provides an advantage,but for more complicated systems having high information con-
236JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
trol is initially detrimental,and its positive effects reveal themlves only over time.
Thus far,general conceptualization for information con-trol and its mechanism has been prented.The remainder of the current work is organized as follows:thefirst three experiments prima
rily address the benefits of information control in terms of ability to process and integrate infor-mation.Experiment1examines performance in the context of an agent/principal task,and experiment2examines per-formance for one’s lf.Having demonstrated the advan-tages of incread information control,experiment3at-tempts to tea apart the two different heterogeneity components underlying the benefits of information control (individual heterogeneity and dynamic heterogeneity).After achieving a better understanding of the potential benefits of information control,experiment4tests the full t of ideas, particularly the costs associated with information control. Finally,experiment5examines the conquences of infor-mation control for memory and knowledge structure about the decision environment.
EXPERIMENT1:IS INFORMATION
听了会开心的歌
雄狮子CONTROL USEFUL?
In order to test the effects of information control,a simple IHS(Interactive Home Shopping)simulation was created in which subjects were given information about different cameras and were asked to rate the overall quality of the cameras.Subjects performed this task under either high or low levels of control over the informationflow.In the High-InfoControl condition subjects had complete freedom i
n -lecting the quence characteristics in which the information was displayed,whereas in the Low-InfoControl condition subjects had no freedom in determining the information’s quence characteristics,and they viewed the information in a manner similar to viewing a movie.
Method
Subjects.Thirty-six subjects participated in this exper-iment for class credit.In addition,a reward of$20was promid to the subject with the best overall performance. During the task each subject examined and rated nine dif-ferent cameras,taking approximately10minutes.Subjects were randomly assigned to either the High-InfoControl or Low-InfoControl conditions.
Task.In order to determine decision quality,it is uful to compare the judgments subjects make to a t of optimal judgments.For this reason an agent/principal task was util-ized.In this task,subjects were given the importance (weight)that the principal places on the different attributes (we will refer to tho as the principal’s utilities)and were asked to make judgments according to the utilities(Ariely and Wallsten1995;Huber,Ariely,and Fischer1998;West 1996).One could argue that such agent tasks are not com-mon;however,many of the decisions we make in our day to day lives are indeed agent tasks.For example,when we buy prents,go to restaurants or movies,and even buy food at the grocery store,the focus of many of the de-cisions is aimed at pleasing others and not ourlves.
At the ont of the experiment subjects were introduced to the task,given explanation about the product category, and were given three examples of the cameras in the t (including the best and the worst).Each of the cameras was depicted along four dimensions(lens,body,shutter,and engine),which were described and explained to the subjects. Ratings on the four dimensions were on a common0–100 scale,with low numbers reprenting low desirability levels and high numbers reprenting high desirability levels.All other attributes were said to be equal.During the main task subjects were asked to u the computer interface to learn about the different cameras so that they could rate them according to the principal’s utilities.
The nine different cameras were divided into three ts of three cameras each.Each of the three ts(compod of three cameras)was prented on a different trial for sub-jects to examine and evaluate.On each of the three trials, subjectsfirst viewed information regarding the three cam-eras in the t and were then asked to rate each of them on a scale from0(not attractive at all)to100(very attractive). This task was repeated three times for each subject,so that nine cameras were examined and evaluated in total.Order of the cameras within and between trials was counterbal-anced between subjects.
Stimuli.The stimuli were structured bad on three lev-els(30,60,and90)for each of the four attributes
(lens, body,shutter,and engine),which were combined to yield the34basic orthogonal design(e Addelman1962).By using this approach the stimuli reprented the entire range on the different attributes while at the same time keeping the correlations between the different attributes at zero,thus allowing maximally efficient estimates of utilities(attribute importance weights).The nine cameras constituted the basic camera t upon which all stimuli were bad.The principal’s“true”utilities were computed by assigning un-standardized weights of lens85,body70,shutter55,and engine40.By plugging each camera’s(0–100)scores on tho four dimensions into the principal’s objective function, the overall value and rank order of each camera was cal-culated.Finally,in order to avoid regular values(such as multiples of10)and to make the cameras appear more re-alistic,a small random component(ע10percent)was added to each of the values on each of the cameras.This random component was such that the rank ordering of the different cameras was not changed and values of100or above were excluded.
Procedure.The interface was prented as a hierar-chical information system with three cameras reprented at the top layer of the hierarchy,the names of the four attributes at the cond level,and their values at the third level(e Fig.1).Subjects were randomly assigned to pairs,and within each pair one subject was assigned to the High-InfoControl condition and one to the Low-InfoControl condition.During
CONTROLLING THE INFORMATION FLOW
237
FIGURE 1
AN EXAMPLE OF THE SCREENS IN THE HIERARCHICAL
INFORMATION
SYSTEM
N OTE .—Panel A reprents the highest level of the system,panel B the middle one,and panel C the lowest level.Note that subjects in the Low-InfoControl condition viewed only the screens reprented in panel C.
the task,subjects in the High-InfoControl condition had three minutes 1to view the information before rating the three cameras in a t.During this time the High-InfoControl subjects were free to choo which pieces of information to view and for how long.Selection of information was done by using the mou and clicking on different parts of the screen (e Fig.1).Subjects in the Low-InfoControl con-dition were expod to the same value information in the same order and timing as the High-InfoControl counterpart to whom they were yoked.The subjects could not control their flow of information,nor did they get the screens that allowed them to control the information flow (panels 1A,1B ).Once the time for examining the information was up,subjects in both conditions were asked to rate the three cameras in the t on a scale from 0(the worst of all)to 100(the best of all).
Results
In order to test whether information control has an impact on performance in an agent/principal judgment task,two types of performance measures were created:a rating-error measure and a weighting-error measure.The rating-error
measure examines the difference between the subjects’and the principal’s overall ratings.The weighting-error measure examines the fit between the declared importance weights of the principal (the true utilities)and the recovered utilities bad on subjects’respons.The two types of measures will be discusd next.
The rating-error measure was compod of the mean ab-solute difference between the ratings each subject gave to the nine different cameras and their true ratings according to the principal (mean absolute rating error).Results for the rating-error measure showed that performance was better (i.e.,clor to 0)in the High-InfoControl condition (M p )than in the Low-InfoControl condition (,11.56M p 18.7,).This result indicates that subjects t (17)p 5.35p !.001in the High-InfoControl condition rated the different cam-eras in higher agreement with the principal,implying that they had better ability to integrate the information in this task.
努力奋斗英文
The weighting-error measure was very different in nature and was bad on the differences between recovered and true utilities.In order to develop this measure,the ratings of each individual subject were regresd on the values ud for the nine different cameras (Ratings p b ϩb ϩ0Lens ).The overall results showed that the b ϩb ϩb Body Shutter Engine fit of the models were better in the High-InfoControl con-dition (p 0.90)than in the Low-InfoControl condition ¯r
描写有哪些
(p 0.77,,),indicating that subjects ¯r
t (17)p 2.57p !.01in the High-InfoControl condition ud their utilities (re-gardless of their exact value)in a much more consistent way than subjects in the Low-InfoControl condition.How-ever,consistency does not necessarily imply better perform-ance.Imagine,for example,a situation in which subjects in one of the conditions simplify the task by consistently using only one of the attributes to make their judgments.In such cas the regression model would capture almost all of the variance and hence yield a very high fit.Nevertheless,be-cau of the simplification process the subjects would per-form very poorly on the task of acting according to the principal’s utilities.Therefore it is clear that in addition to the overall fit,a more careful look is required at the match between the utilities recovered by the regression models and the true utilities of the principal.
In order to examine the utility fit,the recovered utilities for each subject were estimated and transformed to a com-mon scale in which the sum of the utilities was equal to 1.This transformation was done by dividing each of the re-covered utilities by the sum of the four recovered utilities.By using this approach,the recovered utilities could be di-rectly compared with the principal’s (true)utilities.Next,the mean absolute deviations between the true weights for each of the four attributes and the four (transformed)weights estimated for each subject were calculated and compar
ed across the two InfoControl conditions.The results showed that the mean of this weighting-error measure was smaller for subjects in the High-InfoControl condition ()M p 6.4than for subjects in the Low-InfoControl condition (M p ,,).Since this difference score is
11.9t (17)p 4.43p !.001
238JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
冻豆腐怎么做好吃逢字组词FIGURE 2
THE PRINCIPALS AND RECOVERED UTILITIES FOR THE HIGH
糖醋鱼用什么鱼做好吃AND LOW INFOCONTROL
CONDITIONS
N OTE .—Each t of utilities is converted to a scale such that the sum of utilities in each t is equal to one.
a composite of four different attributes,one can also examine the fit between the two ts of utilities parately for each of the attributes.As can be en in Figure 2,subjects in both conditions emed to overestimate the two most im-portant attributes (lens and body)and underestimate the two least important attributes (shutter and engine).However,this tendency was much stronger for subjects in the Low-InfoControl condition,which is the main reason for their diminished match and fit with the principal’s utilities.
Discussion
The goal of experiment 1was to test whether differences in the level of control over the information flow produce differences in task performance.The results clearly support the notion that incread information control leads to in-cread performance for this simple task.This performance increa held for both the rating-error and weighting-error measures.The rating-error measure showed that subjects in the High-InfoControl condition rated the different cameras in a way that was more consistent with the principal.The weighting-error measure showed that subjects in the High-InfoContr
ol condition were more consistent in their u of the model and matched the principal’s utilities better.In addition,looking at the differences for the four individual utilities revealed an interesting pattern in which subjects in the High-InfoControl condition treated the weights of all four attributes differentially,while subjects in the Low-InfoControl condition simplified the task and treated the two most important attributes similarly.
EXPERIMENT 2:THE SELF-EXPRESSION
EXPERIMENT
So far the discussion of information control has been expresd in terms of individual preferences,while exper-iment 1utilized an agent/principal task.By using such a task,subjects did not express their own preferences but,rather,the utility structure of a known principal.The de-cision to u such an agent/principal task was made in order to achieve better measures of decision quality and accuracy.However,using such a task assumes that the process for expressing a principal’s utilities is similar to the process by which one’s own utilities are expresd.Although consum-ers commonly engage in agent tasks when purchasing goods for others (West 1996),being an agent for a principal with well-known and articulated utilities is not as common.Therefore,the goal of experime
nt 2was to test if the same pattern of results hold when expressing one’s own prefer-ences.Note that the assumption made in experiment 1(and again in experiments 3and 4)is that the task of expressing utilities for one’s lf and for others does not interact with the factors manipulated in the experiments.In general this assumption ems reasonable,but nevertheless it is desirable to test it empirically.
工地测量
Method
Subjects.Forty subjects participated in this experiment
in exchange for $10.In addition,a reward of $20was prom-id to the subject with the best overall performance.During the task each subject examined and rated 36different cam-eras,taking approximately 40minutes.Subjects were ran-domly assigned to either High or Low InfoControl conditions.
Task,Stimuli,and Procedure.The overall task was
similar to the task in experiment 1,involving the same cam-eras and the same basic interface.There were,however,three main differences between the procedure ud in this exper-iment and the one u
d in experiment 1.First,subjects in this experiment were asked to make judgments for them-lves and not for the principal.Second,in order to increa the stability of the data,subjects examined and rated the three ts of three cameras twice,making it a total of 18cameras during the main task (this was also done in ex-periment 3).Finally,since in this experiment there was no principal and therefore there was no standard of perfect performance,subjects’own ratings were ud as a bench-mark for their own performance.For this purpo,subjects were also asked to engage in two concurrent rating tasks of nine cameras that were bad on the same structure of the cameras in the main task but different in their values.During each of the concurrent rating tasks,subjects simultaneously saw descriptions of nine cameras and were asked to give each of them an overall rating on the same scale they ud
