How Algorithms Constrain Consumer Experience
通过多方法民族志研究健身追踪软件用户，发现算法通过可读性、可见性和合法性机制迫使消费者进行认知、实践、关系和情感工作，从而系统性地约束消费者体验。
Abstract Prior literature is yet to explain how algorithms systematically constrain consumer experience (CX). To address this issue, we conducted a multi-method ethnographic study of consumers using fitness tracking software. We draw on the information science literature to demonstrate that the constitutive properties of information technology (IT) that underlie algorithms result in a set of restrictive fundamental interactional mechanisms imposed through algorithmic logics of legibility (what is selectively registered as input), visibility (what is selectively represented in output), and legitimacy (normative commitments embedded in input and output choices). We find that these mechanisms systematically constrain the distinct dimensions of the CX construct by eliciting consumption work. Consumers perform cognitive work to think through algorithmic limitations, practical work to accommodate those limitations, relational work to clarify algorithmic misrepresentation, and affective work to deal with algorithmic delegitimization. We make two contributions. First, our emergent framework not only demonstrates how algorithms systematically constrain CX, but is also more broadly relevant to consumer research because it enables accounting for the agency of IT. Second, we provide a corrective to the passive, emotion focused, view of CX by demonstrating how the consumption work of accommodating algorithmic limitations constrains the distinct dimensions of the CX construct.