Digital service consumption, blessing or curse? : exploring the effect of persuasive design features on mindfulness and consumer well-being

Whether digital services simplify and enhance the user experience or manipulate it is discussed controversially. Contributing to the debate, this study links the concept of mindfulness to digital service consumption. It explores whether supporting services based on persuasive design features impact consumers’ mindfulness and whether consumers’ mindfulness affects psychological outcomes. The findings of the event contingent diary research with 100 digital service experiences provide no conclusive evidence. On the one hand, persuasive design features are not found to impact consumers’ mindfulness. On the other hand, consumer mindfulness in the digital service process is negatively related to stress and positively related to satisfaction and well-being. The implications suggest joint efforts between socially responsible companies and stakeholders from public and non-profit organizations to clearly communicate the aim of digital services and ensure mindful cognitive information processing