Proceedings of the Third International Conference on E-Technologies and Business on the Web, Paris, France 2015

Message Perception within Context-Aware Recommender Systems

Mark A. Hooper, Paul Sant
University of Bedfordshire,
Department of Computer Science and Technology,
University Square, Luton, UK, LU1 3JU
mark.hooper@beds.ac.uk, paul.sant@beds.ac.uk
ABSTRACT

Thus far implementation of Context Aware

Recommender Systems have primarily focused
on what to recommend by deriving results
from patterns of behavior and environment to
determine optimum product selection for
recommendation.
Our
experiment
demonstrates that a purchasers affective state
also has an effect on their perception of
information presented via a mobile device. We
posit that the how and when to recommend
are important considerations that have not been
fully addressed when considering the display
of recommendations. Together with user
behaviors associated with purchasing traits,
e.g. impulse buying, we explore the
information processing styles of mental
imagery and analytical processing; risk
acceptance; involved user effort; and
marketing techniques of positive and negative
appeals. Results show that these different
methods of presenting information to the
purchaser will be successful in obtaining a
positive user perception within different
affective states. Together an understanding of
these information presentation and processing
techniques is used to build a representation of
a purchasers perception that could be used in
m-commerce systems.

Research is beginning establish an understanding of user affective, social and physical states and their relevance within context-aware systems [1]. However it is only
now with the advance of smart-phone sensor technology that research can truly leverage this knowledge within the area of
mobile recommender systems [2]. Though
research into context-aware recommender
systems is now showing positive results
through multi-criteria evaluation of both
user generated content and environmental
context the utilisation of contextual information is still thus far limited.

KEYWORDS
Recommender systems, personalization, user
interfaces, affective computing, context-aware

INTRODUCTION

The focus of this paper is to demonstrate

that user context can be used to understand
how an individual reacts to information
presentation styles via a mobile device. We
posit that understanding user behavior
within context is critical to fully realise the
potential for recommender system results
through message customisation, especially
within the developing area of m-commerce
environments. To support this we define
and partly verify a framework for recommender system personalisation that introduces a new layer of system intelligence
through the use of message customisation
based on user contextual behavior.
We discuss the theory that mood and emotions influence our selection of cognitive
processing modes which in turn provide an

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Proceedings of the Third International Conference on E-Technologies and Business on the Web, Paris, France 2015

insight into the level of message persuasion. To develop our perception trait model
we have developed hypotheses that focus
on the relationships between affective
states, cognitive capacity and behavior. It
is generally agreed that positive moods result in reduced capacity and therefore a
favouring towards heuristic processing,
whereas negative moods can facilitate
more complex detail analysis [3].
Different affective states can also influence
different purchaser traits including, motivation [4], [5], impulse buying [6], compulsive buying [7], brand attitude and adclaim recall [8], risk-taking and self-image
[9]. Myers and Sar [8] provide valuable
insight into how a pre-existing mood affects a users response to imagery inducing
advertisements. We show that understanding these cognitive ability and behaviors
should strengthen recommendation conversion when coupled with standard recommender techniques.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. We investigate a number of affect
behavior relationships and their affect user
perception in section 2. We then discuss
our implementation of an Android application used to capture in the wild user perception of specific messaging styles, see
section 3. In section 4 we present and analyse our results and in section 5 we discuss
limitations and opportunities for further
research. Section 6 presents our final conclusions.
2
2.1

AFFECTIVE PURCHASING
BEHAVIOR
Consumer Behavior and
Advertisement Techniques

We hypothesise that understanding behavior towards a set of situational contexts can

be utilised to optimise context-aware systems by providing a reasoned reaction to-

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wards, not only the presented options, but

also the method of presentation to the user.
We stipulate that the addition of affective
phenomena to the contextual picture is to
also consider the users behavior as reactional and not just as an additional element
of the context that influences preferences.
We can thus potentially indicate behavior
towards the advertisement content and the
medium (i.e. text, image or video), as discussed in the paper by [10]. This hypothesis leads us to consider behavior as a key
concept to advance research within Context-Aware Recommender Systems (CARS),
thus providing further potential for solutions to commercial recommender system
that operate in complex environments targeting audiences with distinct catalogue
product types numbering in their millions.
Though an everyday occurrence the act of
purchasing an item, whether in store or online, is a complex process that includes
both environmental factors and consumer
characteristics, marketing and environment
stimuli, motivation and personality factors.
There are many drivers that form an individuals approach to the purchasing cycle.
These complex emotional drivers include
social potency and closeness, stress reaction, control, harm avoidance, traditionalism, and absorption [6], enjoyment [11],
and perception of risk [12]. These in turn
influence purchasing behaviors of impulse
[6], need for convenience and information
search [13]. Personality traits generally
form our emotional responses to situations
so are key to understanding particular purchasing behaviors such as impulse buying
[6]. As its name implies, impulse buying is
an unplanned event that is made through a
snap judgment process. By reviewing
stimuli to form a quick, convenient representation of a situation it is often characterized as a type of holistic processing that
has advantages of speed, and reduced cog-

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nitive effort [14].

A typical example of a holistic processing
technique is mental imagery, this is an influential tool for advertisers for enhancing
brand attitudes while engaging consumers
[8]. The process not only includes the marketing message cues of visual, auditory,
tactile and emotional [15], but also draws
upon the purchasers previous experience,
memories and daydreams to fully form a
visual image of the situation [13]. This
contrasts with analytical processing which
forms a comprehensive understanding of a
situation through analysis of individual
stimulus characteristics. Burroughs [14],
determines that the style of processing is
selected depending on the characteristics
of task, stimulus and the individual consumer.
An individuals purchase behavior can be
predicted through their perception of risk,
a consumer will avoid impulse buying
when perception of risk is high [16].
Bhatnagar et al. [12] report on relationships between risk, convenience and online shopping stating that certain product
categories. Music and CDs, are not generally considered risky because of the practicalities of shopping on-line, i.e. reduction
of costs and an increase in convenience to
make purchases more likely [12]. Products
with higher value are perceived as to have
a higher risk, however they could be
viewed as being more convenient to be
purchased on-line if more involved [12], or
are likely to require an evaluation process
or other pre-purchase activity [13].
Evaluation processes used in information
search rely upon analytical information
processing to produce a comprehensive
understanding [14]. Information search via
the use of mobile phones is important in
the evaluation of alternatives and prepurchasing activities, e.g. finding discount

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vouchers [13]. Using an analytical processing style the individual will attempt to
understand details of the purchasing situation from all angles, in doing so they will
be more likely to identify all important information including negative factors and
therefore be able to limit risky consequences [14].
In addition to considering styles of information processing, risk acceptance and
levels of processing effort we should also
understand how common techniques for
manipulating emotions are important in
marketing campaigns. We have briefly
mentioned emotional drivers that shape our
decisions and behavior, the use of emotional appeals in marketing create a psychological reaction that could be resolved
by acting upon the appeal message, e.g.
through purchasing an item [17]. Fear appeal has been widely used in commerce
and awareness campaigns with varied success depending on content and severity of
message [17], however the basic premise is
to focus on insecurity and concerns in order to prompt action. Positive appeals also
exist and are written to engage arouse
emotions like love, desire or humour to
invoke behaviors including self-esteem
[18]. So we can summarize the above by
identifying four categories that help form
knowledge of consumer engagement with
marketing messages and around which we
can build our hypotheses:
Processing style mental imagery vs.
analytical
Risk acceptance low risk vs. high
risk
Cognitive capacity low effort vs.
high effort
Appeal type positive vs. negative
appeals

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2.2

The Influence of Emotion upon

Consumer Behavior

This section discusses a number of hypotheses that together will represent a broad
understanding of user perception (and thus
potential user behavior) for use with
CARS. We expect that by determining a
users affective state as being positive we
will be able to establish a different set of
likely behaviors when compared to a negative state. This notion would then support a
systems approach in presenting certain
information or taking a specific action.
Myers and Sar [8] discuss the relevance of
mood and its likelihood as a context for an
advertisement to be successful. Alongside
previous research efforts they state that
their findings appear to show that positive
evaluation of an advert is enhanced when
in a positive mood through the increased
ability to undertake mental imagery processing. They also suggest that capacity to
evaluate detailed information is reduced
during periods of positive mood but this
then increases during periods of negative
mood. This is supported by Escalas [19],
who notes that the effort in generating the
mental imagery decreases the ability to undertake further cognitive tasks such as critically analyse the adverts content which
could in turn produce more negative evaluations.
These findings suggest that mood is a useful context when ascertaining how to present items via a recommender system. The
use of mental imagery may act to make the
recommendation more appealing as mood
positivity increases and thus conducive to
the actual success of the advert. Where a
negative mood is present and mental imagery deemed less favourable then recommender messages that provide detail suited
to analytical processing could be more
successful. Presenting recommender items

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through the use of mental imagery or analytical processing depending on the users
affective context are a novel concepts,
therefore we posit that:
H1: Processing Style
H1a: that a positive correlation will be
achieved between user affective state and
the perception of a mental imagery inducing statement
H1b: that a negative correlation will be
achieved between user affective state and
the perception of a statement using analytical, detail-oriented reasoning
The relationship between risk-taking and
mood holds a similar theme. Research has
often reported that when we are in a positive mood and are presented with a hypothetical situation we are more risk favourable. For example Yuen and Lee [20], note
that those in a positive mood are less conservative and more open to risk. However
they do report significant differences of the
effect of mood on levels of risk acceptance. This could be explained by noting Isen [21], who suggests that when a
person is presented with a real risk situation they are more likely to be risk adverse.
Therefore, along with other research such
as [22] we postulate that negative mood is
more complex than basic categories of laboratory induced moods of sad as used
by [20]. In addition to this it may also be
logical to suggest that real life situational
mood and emotions may potentially produce different results to laboratory findings, especially under different situational
contexts.
Previous research has also determined the
effect of mood on our perception of risk.
Lee [16], presents results that demonstrate
that elements of positive mood are related
to impulsive buying traits. Brave and Nass
[9] state that it is expected that we will endeavour to maintain a positive sensation by

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being more risk adverse with engagement

likely to continue with low-risk impulse
sales. In addition to this, when in a negative state we are generally aiming to recapture a more positive outlook and are more
likely to engage with riskier purchases to
kick-start the positive emotional process
[9]. We follow this reasoning for the next
hypothesis pair.
H2: Risk Acceptance
H2a: that a positive correlation will be
achieved between user affective state and
the perception of a statement with a low
risk focus
H2b: that a negative correlation will be
achieved between user affective state and
the perception of a statement with a high
risk focus
An interesting consideration for the use of
mobile devices is the presentation of information in an accessible, intelligent
manner. The size of device and our general
preference for convenience should influence the way information is presented.
Large sections of text may be off putting to
a user, or indeed be preferred, depending
on their mood or other situational context.
Martin [3] reviewed several research efforts. He summarises that happy moods
lean towards a shallower, heuristic processing due to a lowered cognitive capacity
e.g. probably through being distracted or
when in a pleasant environment. Whereas
sad moods suffer more effortful processing
potentially due to a more problematic environment. With this research in mind we
explore the following hypothesis.
H3: Cognitive Capacity
H3a: that a positive correlation will be
achieved between user affective state and
the perception of a statement with low effort processing

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H3b: that a negative correlation will be

achieved between user affective state and
the perception of a statement with more
effortful processing
The use of positive and negative messaging in adverts and other action appeals
have been widely discussed and used in
both industry and public sector for decades. Simple optimistic appeals to traits,
such as self-esteem [18], are commonplace
and provide positive messages to encourage actions that will produce a positive
outcome. Fear appeals are a different technique which are more complex and require
a greater understanding of how negative
thoughts are transferred to the user in order
to promote an action [23]. A prime example of a use for fear appeal is the health
awareness warning focussing on long term
change, see review by [24].
Mood has also been shown to have an effect on both positive and fear appeals. Wegener [25] observed that someone in a positive mood would be persuaded more by a
positively framed message than would a
person in a negative mood. They also
found that the opposite occurred for negatively worded messages, with those in a
negative mood being more susceptible to
fear appeals. We adopt Wegener et al [25],
findings to support our next pair of hypotheses.
H4: Appeal Type
H4a: that a positive correlation will be
achieved between user affective state and
the perception of an optimistic appeal
statement
H4b: that a negative correlation will be
achieved between user affective state and
the perception of a fear appeal statement
The above hypotheses will enable us to
first investigate previous claims that mood
affects both cognitive capacity and user

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behavior and then develop a generic model

for message style manipulation for recommender systems and other platforms i.e.
on-line advertising. This will then, in theory, provide a platform on which to build,
with following research focusing in on
specific purchasing traits which could be
manipulated using bespoke engagement
strategies.
2.3

A Measurement of Perception

To conduct our experiment we require a

simple yet effective measure of user perception. The following section discusses
the rationale for a three point questionnaire
to gauge user perception of specific message styles in order to gauge likelihood of
engagement and conversion from browser
to purchaser.
Liu et al. [26] observe that researchers and
practitioners must understand consumer
perception in order to be effective in the
area of mobile advertising. Research into
context has partly enabled this; however,
understanding of mobile user context is
still incomplete and is a popular area of
research. User perception is fundamental to
understanding a users attitude towards the
advert (Aad) and thus the likelihood of an
adverts success [27]. Aad is the positive or
negative feelings towards an advertisement, service or product within a particular
context and has a strong impact on purchasing [28]. Concepts of perception and
its measurement are complex [29] and with
the measurement of Aad there is also uncertainty. Even early work ascertained that
Aad, as a mediating casual variable that influences purchase intension, could follow
many possibilities [27]. Research attempting to measure Aad has produced multiple
measurement scales, Bruner [30] identifies
75 multi-item measures involving 53 different semantic differentials and conservatively suggests an openness within the

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field towards measures of Aad. Drawing

upon simple measures used to calculate Aad
to in turn imply perception we opt for a
very short and broad measure of attitude to
gauge opinion. After analyzing the different semantic differentials presented by [30]
we reject examples that were deemed to be
more applicable to the specific content that
an advert likely to present e.g. informativeinformative and beautiful-ugly. We select
three very general semantic differentials
that capture a measure of formed attitude
and also encapsulate the majority of those
shown to have been used previously. These
are
effective-ineffective,
appealingunappealing and believable-unbelievable.
Though we are utilizing the term effectiveness as part of our perception measure its
use should not be compared with the term
advertising effectiveness. Advertising effectiveness is widely understood to be the
final measure of an advert where the consumer actually makes a purchase. Research
in this area spans decades e.g. [31], [32].
Attitude towards an advert or recommendation is clearly key towards its success
[32], thus our use of effective-ineffective is
to capture a general measure of the subjects personal perception of whether a
message is capable of producing a deep
impression or achieving its intended result.
In addition to this our use of believableunbelievable is to represent the users perception of the messages credibility, which
Lutz et al., [27] identify as a determinant
of advert attitude. The recent world-wide
study by [33] reports that credibility is a
fundamental component towards advert
effectiveness. This is consistent with the
wider research communitys opinion of the
impact of trust of mobile advertisements
and recommender systems [26].
With regards to differential appealingunappealing appeal is obviously a personal

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thing. It is clear that visually appealing adverts accelerate a consumers intention to

purchase [34], however other content is
also important. Park et al. [35] determine
that appeal to emotions will be particularly
appropriate to advertisements within the
mobile environment. Hadija et al. [28] note
that users of social media do notice embedded advertisements but quickly disregard them to focus on other content such as
friends profiles and pictures. It is clear
that this is mostly due to the users focus
on the task in hand but is also identifies
that an advertisement must focus on characteristics of attractiveness, design and use
of colour to be successfully appealing [28].
Therefore we posit that a purchasers perception of an objects appropriateness and
design, i.e. appeal, is critical to understanding likelihood of engagement and success
in its objectives.
Though simple, our three semantic differentials provide an aggregate of key elements to retrieve a realistic understanding
of user message perception within real-life
situations using mobile devices. Its use is
discussed in the following section.
3

METHOD

We were keen to not follow other researcher methodology of stimulating mood states
through techniques such as the use of
mood eliciting video within a laboratory
environment , e.g. [8], and favoured utilization of natural in the wild moods and
emotions within a mobile device context.
To complete the experiment needed to corroborate our hypotheses required a robust
smart-phone application (Android) that
was user friendly, able to package data securely whilst also ensuring relative unobtrusiveness.
The following sections describes the approach to substantiate the trait behaviors

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discussed earlier.
3.1

User Interaction

The main aim of the experiment was to

capture user affective state, i.e. emotions
and/or mood and measure user perception
feedback to specific statements crafted to
prove our hypotheses.
Though there have been some successes in
using sensors and other data to establish a
subjects mood or emotions see [36], we
determined that a users ability to selfdiagnose (emotional intelligence) is still
more reliable and easier to implement via
the mobile phone for this stage of our research. Many measures of emotion and
mood have been explored and theories
abound. However due to their relative simplicity dimensional theories tend to be the
favoured approach where users are asked
to perform a self-diagnosis. We adopt
Mehrabians [37] Pleasure-displeasure,
Arousal-nonarousal,
Dominancesubmissiveness (PAD) as it is a dominant
dimensional model which has been shown
as an effective method of modelling emotions and other affective states [38]. Our
hypotheses require a scale of positivenegative affect which directly correlates
with the pleasure-displeasure scale of PAD
[37]. In addition to this the three dimensional approach provides additional granularity against which to further analyse our
results and if possible determine more indepth hypothesis.
We poll the user during periods of natural
device use to capture the users selfreporting of their affective state using a
popular psychological tool developed by
[39] called the Self-Assessment Manikin
(SAM). This three factor graphical scale
provides a quickly understood, effective
user interface, which directly transfer to
the three dimensional PAD scales. Note

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that each scale is measured from one up to

five with five being the maximum value.
Fig. 1 is a screenshot of our Android implementation showing the three SAM
scales with a larger image that pops up upon selection of an individual image for
clearer visibility on small screens.
3.2

Determining Likelihood of
Engagement

For testing our four trait hypotheses we

developed 38 statements split over the
types of high and low risk, fear and optimistic appeals, mental imagery and detail
processing, high and low effort. The longest statement was 343 characters long
(with spaces) with the average being 136
characters long. We wanted to ensure that
any emotion educing bias was reduced by
not using video, images or any other colour
variation throughout our tests. Therefore
all statements are displayed using the same
simple interface with light blue text on
black background using 18 px Arial. A selection of five statements are randomly selected and displayed, the user is then
prompted to rate each statement as described below.
Where previous research including [40],
[41], [42], have provided comprehensive
checklists that capture user attitude towards advertisements we deem that for in
the wild testing these are too detailed to
implement. In addition, as we were not assessing adverts per se but rather tailored
statements that singularly focus on a particular trait we deemed attributes such as
brand reinforcement, empathy, familiarity,
entertainment, in formativeness or statement such as I dont like it unsuitable for
our needs. We therefore opt for a broad
three point questionnaire that focuses on
key elements of perception that have been
shown to be important factors in the success of an advertisement, see section 2.3.

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We use three semantic differentials of effective-ineffective, appealing-unappealing

and believable-unbelievable in our measure of perception. Throughout the rest of
this paper we will refer to this measure as
the eab-perception. Each message statement is subject to the eab-perception, each
differential is rated using 5 point psychometric Likert scale e.g. from 1) Very ineffective to 5) Very effective. The three eabperception semantic differentials have been
selected as they provide a reflective summary of the users perception of the statement and therefore a likelihood of engagement. This method enables us to produce a potential negative or positive response to a statement. As per typical use of
multi-item we simply use the result of
SUM(eab-perception), Cronbach = 0.79.

Fig.1 Screenshot of our Android implementation

showing the three SAM scales for capturing the
users affective state. For clarity on smaller
screens the larger overlaying image is a pop-up
which actions on selection of a smaller image

Each statement type is relatively simple in

structure with the focus being on a basic
message to the user for interpretation. The
structure for each type of statement used is
described as follows:

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Mental imagery statement that only

induces mental imagery i.e. analytical processing not required
Detail processing statement that
provides information that needs to be analysed or compared
Low effort easy to read statement
with shorter word length (18 word average)
High effort statement with longer
word length (34 word average) using more
complex statements
Low risk statement that presents no
risk and is very general
High risk statement that presents a
situation with an element of risk
Fear appeal statement that infers that
inaction will lead to a negative result
Optimistic appeal statement that infers that an action will lead to a positive
result
The reader should note that some of the
statements are structured in a way that they
fit several categories. For example a small
number of high risk and high effort fitted
the definition of a detail processing statement. The reverse however is not always
the case.
4

RESULTS

Our research into the effect of mood and

our perception of different ways of presenting information via a mobile device
draws upon a number of previous hypotheses. Correlation analysis is used to prove
the extent to which in the wild affective
state determines the likelihood of each
processing behavior trait being favoured.
Our experiment collected 57 responses
with 58% of responses completed by male
participants. A total of sixteen users partic-

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ipated in the experiment, 75% male and

25% female. Though a wide ethnic population was included 62% were white British.
The spread of age groups were as follows,
21 years and under (25%), greater than 22
years and less than 35 years (50%), greater
than 35 years (25%). Though we seek
strong correlation for our results we obviously do not expect perfect values of 1 and
-1 for respective positive and negative correlations for a number of reasons. We
acknowledge the main issues behind the
self-reporting technique used in our data
collection. Firstly the users input is subjective, relying upon the users emotional
intelligence (ability to self-assess their
mood and emotions). Secondly that both
the input for the PAD assessment and the
perception feedback both utilize the Likert
style scales which can be prone to central
tendency bias.
As our hypotheses are biased towards particular positive or negative correlations we
test for one-tail correlation the results of
which are represented as r. The probabilities of these are measured using p-values
and where statistically significant are
shown as p<0.05 (confidence level of
95%) or p<0.01 (confidence level of 99%).
Our results are as follows. We find a positive correlation between level of affect and
the perception of mental imagery statements (r=0.45, p<0.01) thus H1a is proven. However it is not clear that the opposite case applies i.e. a negative correlation
between affect and the perception of analytical detail processing. Our results show
a minor, insignificant correlation, thus H1b
is not proven. See Fig. 2 for representative
correlations.
The failure of H1b could be explained by
suggesting that though detail processing is
favoured when in a negative state it may
not be true that we are unable to undertake

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analytical processing when in a positive

state. Though the undertaking of mental
imagery may take up cognitive capacity
and thus reduce detail processing it does
not necessarily mean that there is an inability to conduct some detailed analytical
processing in the absence of mental imagery processing. In other words though we
may not completely focus upon the message details we will still be able to process
the overall meaning and develop a general
perception of the message [43], and therefore produce different results depending on
the situation.

Fig. 2 Correlations for statements using Mental

Imagery and Detail Processing

For H2a we find a positive correlation between level of affect and the perception of
low risk statements, therefore H2a is proven (r=0.3, p<0.05). However the results
present no significant correlation between
affect and the perception of high risk
statements, thus H2b is not proven. To
help explain this lack of correlation we
note that Lewis et al. [44] present further
levels of complexity into the understanding
of negative emotions. He suggests that varied effects on risk taking can be found with
different types of negative emotions. Conflicting effects are not only present when
comparing consequential with reflective

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mechanisms but also that anger and fear,

while both negative, have opposing effects
with angry people favouring risk and fearful people being more risk adverse.
Though this argument may provide some
insight we can also see that other context
will have an effect on mobile device users
perception of risk. It has been shown that
environmental factors, including sound
[45], [46] and location [47], have a controlling effect on our ability to process information. In addition to this user activity
such as multi-tasking can also have a detrimental effect on comprehension [48].
With both environment and activity having
an impact on user ability to process information we therefore suggest that a user
could fail to form a satisfactory perception
of risk under certain circumstances, especially if the message requires careful deliberation.
Our hypotheses on perceptions of effort
follow a similar pattern to H1 and H2. A
relatively low positive correlation (r=0.28,
p<0.05) has been found between user affective state and the perception of a statement with low effort processing. However
no useful correlation is present between
user affective state and the perception of a
statement with more effortful processing.
Therefore H3a is proven and H3b is not.
As previously mentioned [8], research has
suggested that those in a negative emotional state would be more favourable towards
processing effort. However an explanation
for this suggests that this could be due to a
problematic situation [3]. Knowledge of a
users situation could be key to understanding the lack of correlation in hypothesis H3b. Not only is situational context
very likely to affect cognitive ability and
willingness to engage, the limitations of
the mobile device is also likely to be a factor in preventing a user from fully engag-

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ing in effortful information processing

[49].

derstanding can also be applied for levels

of effort and likelihood of engagement.

The pair of hypotheses involving both optimistic and fear appeals are also only partly validated. The expected positive correlation between user affective state and the
perception of an optimistic appeal statement was successfully achieved (r=0.45,
p<0.01). The results for the perception of
fear appeal statements which as expected
produced a negative correlation was rejected with no significance found. See Fig. 3
for representative correlations.

Fig. 3 Correlations for statements using Positive

Appeal and Fear Appeal

The value of these findings is important in

that if a recommender system is armed
with values for affective state then it can
determine how best to present the recommended item. For example irrespective of
the product being recommended when the
user is in a positive state the system could
use mental imagery to maximize purchase
conversion rates and when negative use
different techniques such as increasing
brand awareness or product comparisons.
Understanding how a users mood shapes
their response to risk also potentially enables a system to determine how and when
to present certain higher risk items, for example an expensive holiday. The same un-

ISBN: 978-1-941968-08-6 2015 SDIWC

DISCUSSION

Whilst our in the wild experiment has

confirmed that correlations are present between some behavior traits and levels of
affect the results show that not all cases are
proven. We reject hypotheses that require
complex analytical effort, fear appeal or
acceptance of higher risk. Concerns would
be raised if converse correlations were
achieved however we see zero (or very
close to) correlations. The spread of results, in particular for negative mood, suggests that either some emotions are more
complex than tested for or that other factors are influencing the relationship between mood and the behavior traits. This
highlights the main limitation within our
experiment and shows that a larger set of
results is need for analysis against additional user contexts. In addition to this
more realistic adverts or recommender
explanations and items important to the
user are needed to further prove the hypotheses developed.
While not all hypotheses have been proven
we can at this stage still present an insight
for recommender message personalization
to users in both positive and negative
moods even without considering other contexts. The basic behavior trait model utilizes logic for personalization for users in
positive or negative affective states, see
Fig. 4. The caveat of consider_using
shown in the logic allows the option to utilize different engagement techniques when
the user is not in a positive mood. While
our results from H1, H2, H3 and H4 do not
prove that techniques such as detail processing will always be effective when the
user is in a negative state they do show that
the opposite technique, in this case mental
imagery, will not be effective. Therefore,

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selecting the consider_using options potentially provides a higher chance of success.

Obviously a system that is achieving insight into a purchasers affective state by
means other than self-diagnosis will also
have access to other contextual information. Therefore a system will be unlikely to solely utilize basic message personalization described in Fig. 4 and will also
draw upon additional factors that inform
understanding of purchaser perception and
likelihood of engagement. The users environment, their levels of activity and the
company of others will all have an effect
on ability to conduct actions of processing
information (whether consciously or not).
If one or more of the inputting context become extreme then the purchaser may be
unable to filter out their effect causing the
perception likelihood to become less predictable. Under these situations the system
may choose to only engage in the simplest
manner, say to just increase brand awareness, or indeed decline to engage completely.
IF affective_state = positive
THEN using {
mental imagery
positive appeal
low risk
low effort }
ELSE
THEN consider_using {
detail processing
fear appeal
higher risk
higher effort }
Fig. 4 Pseudo code representing logic for selecting
basic message personalization.

So, to be truly successful in their integration into m-commerce recommender systems the personalized, perception-aware
interface must incorporate a range of clearly understood contexts. Through personal-

ISBN: 978-1-941968-08-6 2015 SDIWC

ized presentation of recommender messages the system utilizes the most appropriate
format and therefore influences behavior.
The focus of our next stage of research is
to further our understanding of this concept. This will enable a revision of the logic within our basic trait model with the utilization of additional context introducing a
greater certainty when considering options
for engagement.
6

CONCLUSION

In this paper we have addressed the following. 1) Whether an understanding of

user behavior traits and user affect can be
used to determine how best to present information in order to increase the likelihood of m-commerce engagement. 2)
Whether context-aware recommender systems can adopt behavior trait models
alongside specific user context to determine how and when to present recommendations.
For our first research question we conclude
that if the affective state of the user is
known then behavior traits can be used to
inform how best to present information to
a mobile user. We have shown that messages presented in the wild via a smartphone which employ methods of mental
imagery, low effort, low risk and positive
appeals produce increasing levels of positive perception as user mood improves.
Though our results suggest that the same
does not apply to detailed analytical processing, higher effort, fear appeals and
higher risk methods they do still provide
support for a basic behavior trait model.
We conclude that context-aware recommender systems can adopt behavior trait
models to determine how to present a recommended item. We have also indicated
that with a greater understanding of the
impact of other user contexts then detailed

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analytical processing, higher effort, fear

appeals and higher risk methods could also
be used within message customisation and
the presentation of recommender items.
Therefore our closing conclusion is that a
context-aware recommender system armed
with a comprehensive behavior trait model
will be able to determine the how and when
to present recommendations for optimized
engagement and thus improve return on
advertisement investment in m-commerce
contexts.
Future work will be directed towards strategies of engagement and message personalization within recommender systems.
Our focus will be within contextawareness, and the understanding of user
behavior within contrasting situations.
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