From web forms to chatbots: The roles of consistency and reciprocity for user information disclosure
研究了网站交互决策助手从静态表单转向聊天机器人时，对话风格和互惠触发如何影响用户披露电子邮件地址，并通过社会存在感和隐私担忧间接发挥作用。
Abstract Interactive decision aids (IDAs) on websites often require users to disclose relevant information (e.g., preferences, contact information) to help users in making decisions (e.g., product choice). With technological advances in IDAs, websites increasingly switch from static, non‐conversational IDAs (e.g., web forms) to conversational ones (e.g., chatbots) to boost user information disclosure that nurtures the websites' economic viability. While this novel form of IDAs is already widely employed in practice, information systems research has yet to examine the defining dialogue design features of conversational IDAs and their effects on eliciting user information. Drawing on persuasion theory and particularly on consistency and reciprocity as influence techniques, we develop a research model around two crucial dialogue design features of conversational IDAs. Specifically, we investigate the distinct and joint effects of conversational style (i.e., absence vs. presence of a conversational presentation of requests) and reciprocation triggers (i.e., absence vs. presence of reciprocity‐inducing information) on user information disclosure (i.e., email addresses). By combining the complementary properties of a randomised field experiment ( N = 386) and a follow‐up online experiment ( N = 182), we empirically provide evidence in support of the distinct and joint effects of conversational style and reciprocation triggers of IDAs on user information disclosure. Moreover, we demonstrate that these dialogue design features have indirect effects on information disclosure via perceptions of social presence and privacy concerns. Thus, our paper provides theoretical and practical insights into whether, how, and why critical IDA dialogue design features can better elicit user information for website services.