The moderating effects of psychological reactance and product involvement on online shopping recommendation mechanisms based on a causal map

The use of the Internet in the daily activities of individuals and firms has become entrenched, and online shopping has become commonplace. However, debates about how online shopping recommendation mechanisms (OREMs) should be designed have not been completely resolved. The challenge with traditional online shopping recommendation mechanisms (TR-OREMs) is that they focus too much on quantitative factors. Thus, they ignore causal interrelationships with qualitative factors that are believed to significantly impact quantitative factors. Considering only quantitative factors and ignoring qualitative ones likely distorts the final recommendation results. Another problem with TR-OREMs is that they ignore the perceived psychological reactance of consumers against the recommended products. Such consumer reactance may be reduced when the causal interrelationships among all the quantitative and qualitative factors are analyzed and incorporated properly into the OREM. To overcome these problems, we propose a causal map – online shopping recommendation mechanisms (CM-OREMs) based on a causal map. We analyzed possible causal relationships among quantitative and qualitative factors and incorporated them in the recommendation process to reduce consumer reactance against the recommendation results. Furthermore, an elaboration likelihood model (ELM) was used to build hypotheses about how the online shopping behavior of consumers is affected by OREMs based on the proposed causal map. Specifically, the performance of the proposed OREM was empirically analyzed by gathering experiment data from qualified respondents who were asked to refer to the proposed OREM before making purchasing decisions via mobile phones. Statistical results showed that the proposed OREMs could enhance consumer decision satisfaction, decision confidence, and attitude toward the recommended products. It could also positively affect consumer purchasing intentions. The OREM had a greater effect on the high-reactance group of participants than on the low-reactance group as well as on a high-involvement product versus a low-involvement product.